


Eternal Affray

by bloodspatteredprincess



Category: Dracula & Related Fandoms, Dracula - Netflix, bbc dracula
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:35:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 34
Words: 45,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22328677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodspatteredprincess/pseuds/bloodspatteredprincess
Summary: Arabella Van Helsing, daughter to Zoe Van Helsing, had never expected Dracula would be discovered at the bottom of the ocean, but he was. She didn't ask to become the count's object of obsession. She never expected her one of her best friends, Lucy, to become a victim of the vampire. She didn't ask for any of it, so maybe her tendencies as a twenty-one year old child would get the better of her, putting her in the most dangerous of situations.
Relationships: Count Dracula/Lucy Westenra, Dracula/Agatha Van Helsing, Dracula/Original Character(s)
Comments: 173
Kudos: 220





	1. Chapter 1

Arabella and Zoe Van Helsing stood on a small scouting boat that swayed on the waves of the English Channel, eyes glued to the small screen that streamed footage from a diver’s camera which was scanning the ocean floor for the wreckage of the Demeter, the ship one Count Dracula had used to try and make his way to England to sample a new variety of blood as vampires do. Mother and daughter looked as if they could be sisters except for twenty-two-year-old Arabella Helsing wore makeup with precision and long raven hair that was normally curled and fell down her back where her mother’s hair was lobbed at her shoulders and a little over twenty years older than the girl.

“Mom,” Arabella gasped, manicured finger pointing towards the screen, “do you see that?” She slid her sunglasses off of her nose to rest on top of her head so she could study the screen that was distorted by murky water, brown hair tied up into a bun that had been destroyed and dismantled into whipping hairs and long strands falling down her back by the stinging winds around them. She took the headpiece off of Zoe’s head and placed it onto her own, “Dr. Bloxham about twenty feet in front of you there seems to be a box. Can you get a closer look at that please?”

Zoe slipped her sunglasses off of her head to get a better look at the shapes her daughter had seen, “It’s him.”

Arabella cocked her head to the side as Dr. Bloxham, the second in command at the Jonathan Harker Foundation under Zoe, slid the lid further to the side to reveal the vampire inside. He was perfectly preserved, black hair swaying around his body as the current penetrated the box. He didn’t look a day older than fifty even though journals and written accounts from those who had met the man in the box dated back almost five hundred years, including the accounts from her third great Aunt, Sister Agatha Van Helsing, who had died aboard the Demeter in an attempt to destroy the vampire to keep him from killing anyone else.

“Can we get a look at his fangs, please?” Zoe called over the headset.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea,” Arabella questioned, her face getting closer to the screen as the other doctor used her thumb and forefinger separate the vampire’s lips to reveal sets of fangs. Her hair swung in front of her eyes as it fell from her hair-tie, “He is exquisite.”

When his eyes opened, Arabella jumped back from the screen like she was watching a horror movie, gasping as the vampire clamped down on the doctor’s right thumb, blood clouding the GoPro footage. She couldn’t take her eyes off of the bloody scene in front of her even as her mother called over the radio to assemble cars and helicopters to scan the beaches that night. She couldn’t pull herself from the screen, eyes wide and terrified as she watched Dr. Bloxham swim away through the GoPro that had fallen off of her helmet. 

Divers were retrieved in the other boat before the rest of the team was taken ashore, but Arabella couldn’t keep her eyes off of the screen which still streamed live footage of the vampire that was coming alive under the water until the screen was flicked off by blue fingernails. Arabella looked up at her mother with a small glare, “I’m sending you home, Ari.”

“What?” Arabella was exasperated at the fact that she was being sent away after the biggest discovery of her family’s legacy had been uncovered. “You can’t send me away. This is too big. I’m not missing out on this.”

“It’s your birthday,” Zoe helped Arabella off of the boat, taking her hand so she didn’t stumble. “You should go out with Jack and the rest of your friends before you have to be stuffed up in the dorms at the foundation. You know that this study will not allow you access to the outside world.”

Arabella stood firmly on the white sand, her slip-on shoes sinking into the granules as her hair waved around her having fallen out of its tie completely, “But this is Dracula we’re talking about, not the flu we’re trying to create a vaccine for.”

“Go home, Arabella or I will have you forcibly put into a car and taken back home,” Zoe eyes the girl who stared back at her with just as much defiance. She was her mother’s child, stubborn and difficult, “Don’t give me that look. You remind me of your father when you look at me like that.”

Arabella rolled green eyes before hopping into one of the jeeps that were there to escort her back to the Jonathan Harker Foundation where she could drive herself home, “How lovely, mother. I sure love to be compared to the man you hate the most.”

“Ari,” Zoe sighed, hands-on-hips as she stared her daughter down, “that’s not what I meant. You know I love you.”

“Jack Seward,” Arabella smiled as her favorite man answered the phone as she stepped into her car at the foundation, “are you meeting Lucy and I at Supermax tonight?”

She heard her friend laugh, “Of course, Bella. You’re going to be there.”

Arabella smiled, “You’re going to be there because Lucy is going to be there.”

“Hush, woman, before I make you dance by yourself tonight.”

“I’m sure Lucy will dance with me. She always does,” Arabella smiled. “I’ll see you tonight, my love.”

“See you soon, Bells.”


	2. Chapter 2

Music pumped so loud that Dr. Jack Seward felt it bumping in his chest as he entered the nightclub where he was supposed to meet a Miss Arabella Helsing. He searched the crowd, not even being able to think as he scanned the faces and outfits of all of the young girls with brown hair down their backs, looking to see if he recognized a dress or pair of heels that he had seen her or their friend, Lucy Westenra, in before. He noted the two girls by the DJ booth pressed against each other as they danced to the music that cranked through the room. One had caramel skin, dark hair curly as it swung back and forth with the shorter, paler girl whose dark hair fell almost to her rear with her head laid back like that with a smile on her face. Both girls swayed together, sequined dresses sparkling in the flashing blue, yellow, and green lights. Arabella’s shining black dress stilled, yet still shimmered, as she made eye contact with the young doctor, shouting his name across the crowd, but he couldn’t hear her. He could only see her red painted lips form the syllables of his first and last name. 

Lucy Westenra met his eyes as well, steadying herself with her hands on the other girl’s hips, “Jack! You made it.”

“Yeah,” he shifted, standing between the two girls he enjoyed being around more than anyone else in the world, Lucy who he loved and Arabella who he also loved, but not in the same way. She was like a younger sister who he met during a lecture he attended several years ago at university, sitting next to the girl who looked an awful lot like the lecturer, but who also looked much too young to be a college student, seventeen at the oldest. He had been twenty at the time. That was four years ago. “You guys want a drink?”

Arabella stumbled into Lucy, tripping over her pointed-toe black heels that made her thirteen centimeters taller, 1.702 meters rather than her regular 1.575 meters, “I think I’ve had enough.”

The girls laughed together as the taller Lucy Westenra wrapped her arm around the other’s waist, “Get her more, Jacky. It’s her birthday. Besides, she hasn’t kissed enough people in this room yet.”

Arabella giggled as she pulled from Lucy’s grip and into Jack, “She’s made me kiss every guy in this place including most of the girls.” She pressed her lips to Jack’s, “She’s just mad that I won’t kiss her too.”

“Buy the girl a drink, Jack,” Lucy kept chanting as she pushed her gin into Arabella’s hands and against her mouth. “Please, darling. You’d do anything for me, remember?” She batted her eyes at the doctor, pressing her lips to his as Arabella had done, enjoying the slight taste of Arabella’s spiked punch that still lingered on Jack.

Jack agreed, noticing the glassiness in his younger friend’s eyes and how her smile was drunker than she acted. He lost the girls in the crowd again, making his way to the bar to order Arabella the next beverage that was sure to make her give into Lucy. Lucy always got what she wanted, but Jack was infatuated with that beautiful lady.

When he turned around, Arabella was sandwiched between some guy he didn’t know and Lucy, her back swaying against the guy who stood only a bit higher than her in those heels, her front pressed to Lucy, head resting back on the guy’s shoulder. She looked like a porcelain doll with that crimson smile and pale completion that looked almost hypnotic. As much as he loved Lucy, he hated how she pushed Arabella into her world of sex and misconduct. When he and Arabella grew close during Jack’s time learning under her mother, he promised Zoe he’d take care of Arabella when Zoe found out her cancer was terminal, choosing not to tell Arabella at all, so he felt guilty whenever Lucy would force Ari into going home with men she didn’t know, having to go pick up the crying girl less than an hour later like he always had to because Lucy would get her drunk then ditch her.

He made his way to the grinding trio, pulling Arabella out of the middle and into his arms as he handed her another drink, surly the millionth she’s had that night. Lucy huffed, but took Arabella’s spot, watching as she downed this drink quickly, body swaying against Jack as she left a red print on the rim of the glass, “Ari, wouldn’t you rather dance with Quincy? It is his last night as a single man. At least until we consummate our engagement.”

Jack stared at Lucy, heartbreaking into what felt like a million pieces as he struggled to keep up with Arabella’s moving feet. Despite being completely inebriated, the girl sure knew how to dance. It must have been those dance lessons Zoe had told him Arabella’s father had forced her to take, insisting that science was not enough of an education for the girl, so she was trained in the performing arts like dancing and singing.

“No, Lucy,” Arabella shouted over the remix of ‘Candy Shop’ by 50 Cent. “I want to dance with Jack.”

Lucy gave her a look that would have struck fear into any high school girl, the classic mean-girl look, but Arabella wasn’t afraid of her, laying her head over Jack’s shoulder, dark hair enveloping the breast of his sport coat, “Come on, Bells. Let’s go sit down.”

“Okay, Jack,” she smiled, shooting a playful grin at Lucy before blowing Quincy a kiss. He almost had to carry her to the high-backed sofa along the back wall by the restrooms. They sat together, her head on his shoulder while Jack watched Lucy with that Texan named Quincy who Jack felt inferior to. How Arabella picked up on this, he didn’t know. He wasn’t even sure how she still knew her name at this point, “You’re better than him. He’s a sleaze.”

Her American accent kept slipping back to British, embodying bother her mother and her American father. The word ‘sleaze’ came out with a southern twang, “Since when did you start talking like the rest of us?”

She smiled as she kissed his neck with a quick peck, “Since I moved here to help mom find,” her voice dropped to a whisper as she got closer to his ear, “the vampire.” Her giggle made him smile through the pain he felt in his chest as he watched Lucy make out with this Quincy fellow, “He dated one of the girls dad directed in ‘Evita’ at Baylor. Gave the poor thing syphilis. It got around to half the cast before anyone found out.”

“What about you?” Jack smiled down at her, brushing the brown locks out of her face. He never really realized how much she looked like Zoe. “Did it get you too?”

“God, no! I was a virgin until you let Lucy corrupt me by getting me drunk and leaving me alone with boys,” Arabella slurred, wiping a tear from her cheek. She was an easy to make cry when she drank.

Jack got silent, absentmindedly stroking Arabella’s hair with his right hand as he watched Lucy dance across the room, “How did the scouting go today? Did you find anything?”

Her green eyes shown in the dim light before she nodded like a toddler being offered candy for dinner, “Jack, he’s so cool! He’s just like the journals say, tall and dark. Dangerous.”

“You’re drunk, Bella. You sound like a loon,” Jack grinned as he felt his phone buzz in his breast pocket under Arabella’s cheek. Jonathan Harker lit up his screen as it buzzed, “Speak of the devil.”

Arabella felt around her bag for her phone, frowning when hers didn’t ring, “Those bastards didn’t call me!”

“Come on, drunk. Let’s go,” Jack sighed, helping the girl onto her feet. “We’ll stop and get you food and water on the way there.”

“Good idea, Doctor! My mother would be pissed if I showed up like this,” her breath smelled like a mix of gin and vodka with a kick of fruit.

“And some gum. You smell like a distillery.”

She stuck her tongue out at her best friend before sliding into the front seat of his Nissan, “Thank you for not letting her pawn me off on one of Quincy’s friends.”


	3. Chapter 3

The drive from London to the Jonathan Harker Foundation which sat on the outskirts of a small town outside of Bristol took more than the recommended two and half hours thanks to Arabella’s insatiable appetite, Jack and Arabella having had stopped for food twice and coffee three times on the way for Arabella to prevent her mother from detecting the alcohol in her system. The sun had risen by the time they had arrived on location, the building looking almost decrepit from the outside, but both knew that wasn’t the case on the inside, filled with the most up-to-date equipment money could buy. Both had to go through retina scans to enter past the lobby which was heavily guarded by burly men with automatic assault rifles who eyed her identification badge with much suspicion. 

Arabella didn’t look much like the sixteen-year-old girl in the picture who had black hair and didn’t know how to properly do her makeup. She looked very much her age of twenty-one in that short, black, sequined dress she was wearing which was just long enough over her black nylons. Her hair was curled in loose ringlets around her face which was made up with precision, black rhinestones stuck to her face with eyelash glue in a wave starting above her right eyebrow, down the center of her nose and under her left eye and red painted lips. She looked like an easy college girl who took home a new guy every night from the bar, exactly what Lucy wanted her to be.

“They’re going to tell my mother I look like a slut,” Arabella laughed as Jack followed her through the winding corridors and to where she knew they would need to check-in. “She’s going to freak out.”

Jack elbowed her enough to make her stumble before grabbing her waist to keep her from falling over even though Arabella was completely sobered up by that point, “Like she doesn’t already know.”

She let out an ‘ugh’ sound and she glared at him in mock offense. It wasn’t like Zoe cared too much about how Arabella acted as long as she didn’t get into too much trouble. She understood her daughter was an adult and could do whatever she wanted. It was Arabella’s father that would have a heart attack if he saw his daughter dressed like this, black dress with a neckline that barely covered her breasts.

“Hi, Kathrine,” Arabella smiled as she pulled Jack into the administration office where she and Jack would have to fill out paperwork before joining the rest of the students who would participate in the trial where their blood would be drawn and humanely fed to Dracula, a program that had been set up during the first days of the foundation by her second great grandfather, brother to Sister Agatha Van Helsing. “This is Jack Seward. Mom had him added to the trial a few months ago.”

“I know,” the plump blonde woman sighed, looking Arabella up and down. She shoved clipboards into their hands, “I need the two of you to fill out more of this information before you can join everyone at the briefing presentation.” Jack was handed a badge to clip to the sweatshirt he had to change into with his picture, name, and blood type printed onto it. “I’ve been trying to reach the two of you for hours. Arabella, we’ve been trying to reach you for the past two days.”

“I was at a club and with friends,” Arabella sighed, pressing the pen to her lips as she tried to remember when her last cycle was to put down onto the form in her hands. “Jack had to pick me up.”

“You haven’t been drinking have you?” The question was geared towards the girl in the tiny dress.

“I don’t drink,” Jack clarified, taking the heat off of Ari.

The woman named Kathrine noticed this, eyeing the two, “Good. Neither does he.” She took the form from Arabella, looking it over before turning back to her, “What’s your blood type, Miss Helsing?”

“Rh-negative,” she muttered, watching Jack watch her with his head to the side. “Fancy huh? Less than fifty people in the world have the same blood type as me.”

Jack couldn’t help smiling as she stood to pull the badge the woman had printed for her off of the laminator, clipping it to the lanyard around her neck that also carried her official Jonathan Harker Foundation ID badge, “You always have been the one to be extravagant.”

Before she could open her mouth to shoot back with a snarky comment, a knock on the door frame caught her attention, “Ari, Jack, I’m glad you’re both here.”

Jack met Zoe’s smile, “Zoe, I mean Dr. Helsing, how are you feeling?”

“It’s rather a big day for science I suppose,” Zoe grinned as she leaned against the door frame in her white coat and sweater. “I never expected it to happen on my watch.”

“I meant how are you?” Jack’s voice seemed a little more somber than it should have been and that set off red flags in Arabella’s mind. She didn’t know that Jack was asking about cancer.

“Oh,” Zoe seemed caught off guard, straightening her back, “asymptomatic so far. I try not to think about it.” She ignored the question on Arabella’s lips that was left unsaid as Zoe continued to address Jack rather than her child, “I thought you were withdrawing from the program. I thought there was a girl.”

“Yeah, I did too,” Jack sighed, glancing down at Arabella to plead with his eyes that she not say anything about Lucy to Zoe. It was no secret that Zoe wasn’t a fan of Lucy Westenra, especially after Zoe got a call from Arabella to come to pick her up after Lucy ditched her at a house party on the bad side of London.

Ari nodded as she bit her lip before focusing her attention back to her mother, “What’s wrong, Mom? What happened?”

“You didn’t tell her he bit you?” Kathrine asked like it was nothing, not even taking a break from whatever it was she was typing on that computer of hers.

Arabella stood, grabbing onto Jack as her heels slid slightly on the polished tile floor, seeking balance. Her eyes were wide and lips parted in shock, “He bit you! Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Zoe said flatly. “You’d know that if you didn’t disappear for two days.” She turned her attention back to Jack, “Come on the briefing’s started. Bella, stay here. I’ll explain it after I get Jack situated. Also, get an IV and banana bag stated for yourself. I can tell you’ve been drinking.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment!!! Mentions of IVs please avoid if that’s something that could trigger you

It only took her one try to find a good vein, pierce it with a butterfly needle, and hook up an IV to administer liquids as her mother had ordered, hanging the bag onto the IV pole. She sat with a magazine in her hands as she flipped through the latest tabloid, a bunch of bull only an idiot would believe. She wouldn’t admit it to anyone if they asked her, but she was losing her mind without access to her cellphone as hers and the phones that belonged to other members of the trial were locked away in the administration office. Kathrine had even taken away Arabella’s digital access key to the room, leaving the girl with an open vein sitting on the bench in the subject lounge which was simple, consisting of a single television with limited channels and an endless supply of magazines.

“Bells,” Zoe said as she moved to sit next to her daughter, pushing the IV pole connected to Arabella to the other side so she could sit closer to her, “you feeling better?”

She nodded without taking her eyes off of the magazine in her fingers, “I’m fine. Completely sober.” 

When Zoe tried to wrap her arm around Arabella’s shoulder, Ari pulled away with a sigh. The tension in the room was awkward. The two never really got along very well. They were so similar is the attitude and character that they clashed. That’s why Arabella chose to move to America with her father when her parents split when she was nine, only staying with her mother for Christmas and both of their birthdays which happened to be on the same day, January 13. It wasn’t until two years ago, on her eighteenth birthday, that she moved to England after spending nine years in the United States to join the study so she could make a little money while also getting away from her father who had suddenly lost his mind.

“Why didn’t you tell me he bit you?” Ari asked finally. 

Zoe grabbed her neck, remembering the vision of Dracula choking on her blood, “You were missing in action and I didn’t want to worry you. You have enough on your plate right now.”

“So you’re not showing symptoms?” Zoe shook her head. “No aversion to sunlight or religious symbols?” Again, the answer was no. “Well, I’m glad you’re okay. If something happened to you, I wouldn’t know what to do.” 

Zoe gave her a small smile, patting Arabella’s thigh, “I know he put you through it, Bells, but you’re going to be okay. He’s an ocean away.”

“That doesn’t change anything.”

“I know, but I know what will cheer you up,” Zoe gave her a large grin, handing her gauze and medical tape. “Do you want to go with the rest of the group to meet Count Dracula?”

Her green eyes lit up, yanking the IV out of her arm, pressing the gauze to the bleeding vein on her arm before slapping medical tape to hold it in place, “When?”

“Now!”

“I need to change into sweats. I don’t have time,” Ari huffed, kicking her heels back on.

“It’s fine. Come on.”

There were exactly twelve students in the trial, six women and six men all between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-seven, Arabella being the youngest of the group, standing out amongst her peers who were wearing matching sweats while she was still in her party dress, so it was no surprise that the beast in the glass cage stared her down. She’d never felt so self-conscious in her life while she was being stalked by the apex predator in the room. Her eyes watched him with intrigue as it had on the boat through GoPro footage. She was amazed by him and he seemed just as interested in her, but most likely as a meal. Was he staring at her or the drops of blood that were soaking through the medical gauze taped to her arm?

“As you can see, Count Dracula, the donors before you have a variety of blood types ranging from most common to the rarest,” Dr. Zoe Van Helsing stated, eyes glued to the sheet in her hands which listed off information that she relayed to the vampire even though he was more than capable of reading it himself, but she knew the students by name. He didn’t. “Dr. Jack Seward has an O negative blood type with proficient skills and knowledge regarding modern medicine as well as the occult. Finally, Arabella Van Helsing, Rh-negative blood type, the rarest type, with an educational background in history where she specializes in the world events of the twentieth century while also being fluent in German.”

“You’re daughter,” the beast smiled at the pale girl in the black dress which left little to the imagination, “I see the family resemblance.” Her name rolled off his tongue, “Arabella.” It was his goal to arise a reaction from both Zoe and Arabella, but he didn’t get it as both Van Helsings stared at him with a look made of stone.

Zoe ignored the vampire, “Miss Helsing has also been trained in the performing arts.”

“And when will I get to sample the blood you’ve hand-selected for me, Zoe?” His eyes never left Arabella who tried not to fidget under his intense gaze. She wasn’t like the rest of these girls. She had grown up with legends of him. He had tasted how Zoe raised the girl from the memory of how her blood tasted.

“One of the donors will bring you a selection of blood to choose from in about an hour after they’ve had blood drawn,” Zoe placed an IPad onto the metal table in the middle of his triangular prison. “All of the blood will be brought to you during the day and the student who brings you the samples will be escorted by a guard as well as myself or Dr. Bloxham. You do remember her, yes?”

He let out a small chuckle from his corner in the shadows as the sun shined through the ceiling, admiring how it glinted off of Arabella’s dress, “Yes, the woman who no longer has a right thumb thanks to me. Her blood was rather inferior.”

“Now,” Zoe huffed, “do you have any requests before I take the donors to draw blood?”

“I do, actually,” his smile would have been charming to Ari if she hadn’t been on that boat watching him rip the thumb off of her mother’s assistant. “Would you mind having that lovely daughter of yours bring me the first round? I think I quite like her.”

Zoe and Arabella shared a look which he couldn’t decipher, “I suppose.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains mentions of abuse. Please avoid if that is triggering to you. Don't forget to comment!

He looked up from the tablet in his hand when he heard the heavy metal door across the room slide open with a metallic scraping sound like a fork across teeth. A smile spread across his face when his eyes met the petit frame of Arabella Van Helsing who carried a silver tray lined with multiple bags of blood, each giving off a distinct smell, but it was the smell of her that caught his attention. She no longer smelled like the smoke, alcohol, and her sweet floral perfume from the nightclub she had been in. Her clothes had been changed and her hair washed. She wore black leggings, white platform sneakers and a sweatshirt that hid the curves of her body, the complete opposite of the revealing dress she had had on only a few hours ago.

“Ah, Arabella, my dear,” he grinned at her, “I almost didn’t recognize you. Don’t get me wrong, you look lovely, but I think I preferred that dress you had on earlier.”

She remained unmoved as she waved her hand at one of the guards to open up the ceiling to let the light in, standing motionless at the door as she waited for it to be safe for her to enter, her long braid laying over her shoulder. One of the doctors stood behind her and two armed guards behind that doctor. He watched as she entered the room with a warning that if he was to attack her that he would be burned by the sun.

She set the tray onto the metal table, “That comment was highly inappropriate. In today’s society, such a comment would be considered sexual harassment.” It amused her when his eyebrows knitted together. She knew that all he knew was the past which was full of overlooked mistreatment of women. She intended to correct him. She dealt with enough of that from her father growing up. “In today’s society, you are not allowed to speak to anyone in that way unless they have asked which I didn’t. Besides, my appearance is not meant to please anyone besides myself.”

“My apologies, Arabella,” he seemed taken aback by her and the way she addressed him. She was going to be fun. 

She picked up the envelope that contained whose blood was being fed to him during this first meal, hers and Jack’s, “You may address me as Miss Helsing, Count Dracula. This is not a personal relationship.”

He moved to stand closer to her at the edge of the shadows, “Are these your rules or someone else’s?”

“This is the protocol of the foundation,” she sighed, “besides, I wish to not have a personal relationship with you.”

He beckoned her closer with a finger when she picked the tray of blood back up to present to him, “Well, I might as well enjoy what you’ve brought me.”

He towered over her by fourteen inches, but she had the presence of a woman who matched him in every way with a strong demeanor and a cold aura, “Do you remember each of the donors that were presented to you during this morning’s briefing?”

The tray and her neck were just out of his reach in the sunlight. The smell of her blood had the same effect over him as he remembered Agatha’s having, but this girl didn’t look like the nun. She was a lot shorter, maybe six inches shorter. Her hair was maybe a shade or two darker, borderline between raven and chocolate. He couldn’t quite tell, but the lips were the same and her eyes were the same shade of green-brown. The girl’s mother was a dead-ringer for the nun, but this girl shared the spirit, “Only you.”

She rolled her eyes, “Then I am sure you’ll be excited that my blood is on the menu today.”

One side of his mouth quirked in time with his eyebrow on the same side, “I do have to say I am a bit excited. What was it that your mother said about your blood type?”

She placed the tray down again behind her, taking her own bagged blood into her hand that had been drawn just a few minutes before she had come into this room. It was still warm against her skin, “My blood type is Rh-negative. There are less than fifty people in the entire world with the same genetic mutation.”

“Blood type? Miss Helsing, I’m afraid I don’t exactly understand this,” his dark eyes lined with red kept shifting back and forth between her green ones and the bag of sticky liquid in her hands. “I don’t think you fully comprehend the fact that I’ve missed one hundred and twenty-three years of scientific advancement.”

She reached into the shadows, placing the bag into his outstretched hand. When his nails grazed her skin she pulled away as quickly as she could, “Blood type is a way in which scientists classify blood based on antibodies as well as other genetic factors that exist on the surface of the red blood cell.” She didn’t know if she should be disgusted or not when he sunk his fangs into the plastic she had handed him, watching him slurp the liquid out in less than five seconds. She knew it was only a pint of blood, but this was ridiculous. “My blood lacks the Rhesus protein on the surface of my red blood cells which is what makes it so rare.”

The taste in his mouth brought so many of her memories to him. There were screaming and fighting, Zoe and an unknown man. He kept grabbing at Arabella, slinging her around and bruising her little wrists. I’m taking her with me! No, she’s my daughter, too, John! You didn’t even want kids! She’s my daughter! She was screaming and fighting back, but she was too small. Let me go! Fast forward and she sat in a classroom surrounded by nuns, a convent school in America he could tell. The man locking her in her bedroom with a bible. Our father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Fast forward and there was more screaming, Zoe and Arabella. I hate you! I hate you! Fast forward and she was slammed into a wall, blood dripping down her face as her father stood over her. You ungrateful bitch!

The images faded from his eyes and he looked down at the girl. Her experiences were heinous, yet her blood remained sweet with optimism. The taste was interesting. He hadn’t tasted anything like it since Agatha, “Is this Rh-negative a, as you say, genetically inherited?” Arabella nodded. “You have your aunt’s blood.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who just now realized she's been calling that other doctor by the wrong name after rewatching Dracula again. I'm pathetic lol, but please comment and let me know what you think of this chapter!
> 
> Mentions of abuse please avoid if triggering

“They’re telling me that you won’t drink anyone’s blood except for my own,” Arabella sighed, scanning her identification badge on the padlock that would unlock the door to Dracula’s cell, carrying another platter of blood on it. None of it was hers.

He smiled at her as she stepped into the sunlight which flooded in from the ceiling, trapping him into one corner. He studied the way her hair fell over her shoulders and breasts the way Agatha’s had. Her face was made up with the utmost care, but was simple, highlighting her key features, green eyes with long, black eyelashes and her pouty lips that were tinged ever so slightly pinker than her natural tone. She wore black legging with mesh inserts that gave him an insight into how they looked, small freckles on her upper thighs and a bruise-like birthmark on her left ankle.

“What can I say?” He charmed with his debonair grin. “I’ve told you time and time again that I’m a coinsure of blood, Bella, dear. You are an excellent vintage.” Her nickname flowed off of his tongue, knowing she had given up correcting him and telling him to call her Miss Helsing a few days ago.

She sat down at the table and looked up at him, crossing her legs, “Dr. Bloxam, you can close the ceiling now.”

He eyed her from head to toe, feet clad in those platform sneakers ago, the pure white shining in the sun. He had asked her about them before, being informed that they were called ‘Vans’ and were very popular among people of her age group. Her cream-colored t-shirt had prints of different butterflies on it in black and white. Her neck was perfectly exposed to him as she tossed her hair to the side to play with the silver around her neck. He could see that vein pulsing against the collar of her shirt and it made him lick his lips.

As the sun retracted, he stalked over to her, keeping in line where the sun met the shadows that protected him, sitting at the table across from her as it was shrouded in artificial lighting, “Are you sure that’s a good idea, being alone with me?”

Her expression was playful, her head tilting to the side as her fingers finished adjusting the silver chain around her neck, revealing a petit silver cross sitting in the divot where both sides of her clavicle met at the base of her throat, “Quite sure.” He reeled back from his place only a few feet from her, metal chair clanging against the concrete floor as he reared away from her. She let out a small giggle which made him meet her eyes again, the small sound seemingly taking his mind off of the offensive object around her neck, “You see, I was reading through Sister Agatha’s writings as well as Mina Murray’s journals which tell of her encounter with you, they as well as the accounts from the nun’s that survived your attack at St. Mary’s Convent in Budapest tell in intricate detail your hate for the cross.” She pushed the tray of blood over to his side of the table, “I wanted to test it and see if that was true.”

“And you didn’t mind risking your life in the process?” Dracula spat in her direction as he picked himself up off the ground. “Please cover that horrid thing. I won’t attack you. I swear.”

Arabella gave a breathy scoff as she watched him sit across from her, his face apprehensive as she tucked the pendant behind the cotton of her shirt, “It was a risk I was willing to take because it would only take a few seconds to burn you to a crisp if you lunged at me.” She leaned on her hand, head resting against it as she watched him eye the bags of blood she had brought for him, “I also thought this one would have a special hold on you considering it was Agatha’s, found discarded in the cellar of St. Mary’s surly right before she offered herself up to you in exchange for Mina’s life.”

He thought he had recognized it, but when he had seen it the last time, Agatha had pulled it from her throat and tossed it to the ground without worry, holding a knife to her neck, “And how did you come to have it? We are a long way away from Budapest.”

“Mina had retrieved it to protect herself if you had decided to come after her. She returned it to my second great grandfather when he came to help her set up this foundation,” Ari explained, fingers tracing the metal through her shirt. “It was passed down through the family and was given to me on my first day at Convent of the Sacred Heart in New York after my father moved me into the city. My mother’s grandfather gave it to me. I was thirteen.”

He still hadn’t touched the blood in front of him, choosing to mimic her body language instead, head resting on his hand, “You wanted to be a nun?”

“I did,” she stated before pushing the tray closer to him. She wanted him to eat so he would stop staring at her neck the way he was. She would be lying if she said it didn’t make her a bit nervous. “My father had other plans, though as he moved us down from New York to Virginia and then to Texas. It’s rather difficult to continue your studies when you’re being moved from place to place.”

He poked at the bags, picking them up and sniffing them, snarling his nose at their smell, “You don’t seem like nun material, but neither did your aunt when I met her and she was already one.”

“Please drink the blood I’ve brought you,” she pleaded as she tried to change the subject, her memories of her father flooding her mind in a way she didn’t much enjoy. “You’re starting to offend the other donors.”

He placed her hands flat on the metal and he copied her move once more, tilting his head when she did, but he couldn’t toss his hair over his shoulder as she did, “Their blood is inferior to anything I’ve ever tasted.”

She crossed her ankles under the table, eyeing him with narrowed lids and black lashes fluttering, “Dr. Helsing hand-selected each other the donors based off of their qualifications in all areas of study and experience in the modern world since that is how you absorb information, by drinking blood.”

“Why were you chosen for me, darling?” Dracula reached across the table to take Arabella’s hand to study the maps on veins on the underside of her wrist. His fingernail traced over the purple and blue trails with the utmost care not to slice her skin.

She yanked her hand out of his grip, “Well, I have a lot of experience in modern performing arts as well as extensive knowledge of the twentieth century which you completely missed during your little nap.”

“So you’re abusive childhood and divorced parents had nothing to do with you being chosen as a blood supply for me?” Dracula gave a snarky smile, relishing in Arabella’s reaction as fear flooded her emerald eyes. “Tell me, Arabella, did Zoe hope that your broken spirit would rub off on me, making me a more pliable captive?”

She stood from the table with a scowl on her angelic features. Raven hair framed her pale face as it swung around her with her sudden movement, “Drink the blood I’ve brought you. You won’t be getting any more of mine.” She stormed out of the cell, slamming the door shut as his deep laugh echoed around the room and gnawed at her insides. She felt a knot form in her throat.

She felt Bloxham on her heels as Arabella stormed out of the holding cellar, “What was that all about?”

“Ask my mother,” Ari spit over her shoulder. “She’s the one who decided to create a child with a man with a knack for beating his daughter.”


	7. Chapter 7

Arabella stormed into the donor’s lounge, plopping down onto the sofa. Her head was pounding with the tension that was flowing through her body. She could feel the heat on her face and the tips of her ears which were both surly a deep shade of crimson. Her arms crossed over her chest and her leg bounced in irritation. This anger that was flooding over her couldn’t be pinpointed to her mother, her father, or the vampire who suddenly knew way too much about her, but that should have been foreseen. 

When Jack noticed Arabella sitting on the sofa, he made his way to her, the chilling energy she put off almost made him leave her right there where she was, alone, but he knew her too well and knew what she needed. When he wrapped his arms around her petit frame even though she resisted, ordering him to stop. If anyone who didn’t know their relationship walked in, they would have thought he was seriously hurting her. 

She struggled against Jack Seward who wasn’t a particularly strong guy, but strong enough to overpower her, holding her against the cushions until her anger turned to tears and sobs muffled by his sweatshirt, “You’re okay. It’s okay.” One hand rested on the back of her head to press her closer while the other wrapped around her waist. “What happened? Did he bite you? I’ll stake that son of a bitch myself.”

She shook her head against Jack’s chest as she struggled to breathe with his chest blocking oxygen flow to her nostrils, “No. He knows about my dad.”

Jack pushed her away, hovering over her as he stared into her eyes which had shifted from emerald to a color that resembled dirty pool water. His own eyes were wide as he watched her stare back at him, “How?”

“My blood,” she choked out when Jack ran his fingers through her hair. “He can absorb memories, remember? Where he’s only been drinking my blood, he knows all about my dad and his and mom’s divorce.”

Jack sighed as he pressed himself against her again, lying fully on top of her like a weighted blanket. He couldn’t remember the countless times this has happened. She had done it for him when Lucy met Quincy. He had done this for her when she came home the last time from trying to reconcile with her father, one eye black and blue while her left wrist was broken. She had begged him not to tell her mother and to insist on the story that she fell down the steps was the truth, but Jack didn’t keep that secret for her. That’s why Zoe had Arabella move away from America and into her apartment permanently.

“Do you want me to go get Zoe? Maybe she can find a way to fix this?” Jack tried to insist, pulling Arabella’s body up with his as he sat back up. 

She curled around him with her face in his neck, “Please don’t.” Her voice was muffled as the sound vibrated against his skin. She pulled away and rested her forehead against his. “I freaked out after and I’m sure Bloxham will be talking to my mother about it at any second.”

Like clockwork, Zoe walked into the lounge, trying to suppress the hateful look on her face to give off a more sympathetic look instead. Arabella unwrapped herself from Jack like a teenager who had just been caught sneaking her boyfriend in the house. She folded her hands in her lap and stared at her shoes, tensing up when Jack left her alone with her mother.

Arabella didn’t look at Zoe when the sofa dipped under Zoe’s weight, “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

Ari shook her head, wiping tears and runny mascara off of her cheeks, “Didn’t Bloxam tell you already?”

“Yep,” Zoe huffed, slumping against the back of the sofa. “But I figured I’d get your perspective. You know how Amelia gets. She likes to twist things around.”

Arabella looked up at Zoe, deciding if she should give in to her instinct and lay her head on Zoe’s shoulder or to stay away as she had always been taught by her father, but she did it anyway and was pleasantly surprised when Zoe rested her head on top of Arabella’s, “Dracula because he’s been drinking so much of my blood, has absorbed some of my memories just like your theory suggested. He was asking why each donor was chosen and accused you of choosing me and my messed up childhood into making him more complacent.”

“Had I known your father would be the way he is, I never would have stayed with him as long as I did,” Zoe squeezed Arabella closer to her, trying to ignore the way she almost fought to keep her distance from her mother. “John was perfect when I met him, even when we got married and you were born. He loved you so much, but everything changed when you were born. He wanted a boy.” They looked at each other, Arabella’s eyes still flooded with tears that Zoe wiped away, “When it came to who got custody over you, he insisted that I was unfit to take care of you because I worked too much, so your father got to take you to America. I tried to get you back, but he did everything in his power to keep me away from you.”

Arabella picked up her head and scooted away from her mother, “Yet you still work here, the foundation that brought you two together. He’s Jonathan Harker’s great-grandson. How could the Harker name produce such a monster?”

“Why do you think I refused to name you Arabella Harker?” Zoe muttered, kissing Arabella’s dark hair. “That was a whole other fight.”

An unamused breath left Arabella’s parted lips that were swollen and red from crying, “Maybe that’s why Dracula is so obsessed with me. According to Mina, Dracula traveled hundreds of miles to Budapest to get Jonathan back, then he tried to take Agatha to England. I am the genetic combination of the two of them.”

Zoe nodded, “Exactly. That’s why he won’t drink any of the donor’s blood. He only wants yours.”

“Then he’s not getting any more of it,” Ari spat.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I worked super hard on this chapter and I can't wait to read any comments you might have!
> 
> There are mentions of IV needles and intentional self-harm in this chapter. Please avoid if that triggers you.

She sat cross-legged in the lobby of the Jonathan Harker Foundation, enjoying the quiet and loneliness of the room apart from the noise the air conditioner made as it wrapped her in cold air, but she was able to drown it out to fully immerse herself in the book she was holding, fingers twirling the silver around her neck. The leather of the more than a century old binding was soft between her fingers, nails were bitten down to the quick, a nervous habit that she had been doing since her first tooth came in. The stories of her God and His son filled the yellowed-with-age pages. Embossed on each page was a perspective book and the name of its former owner was etched into the leather cover: Sister Agatha Van Helsing.

“Excuse me, young lady,” a male voice pulled her out of her stories and away from the life of struggle Job faced at the hands of the Devil who made a bet with God that Job would denounce Him. “I need to speak to someone in charge of this establishment.”

The older man before looked meek in his suit and tacky tie, holding a briefcase in one hand and a thick stack of paperwork in the other. His hair was thin and stringy on top of his head, almost reminding her of Professor Remus Lupin from the Harry Potter series, but this man didn’t look a kind and had far fewer scars on his face, so she dropped her feet back onto the ground which was propped up on the small table in front of her. He looked so familiar.

She snapped the Bible in her hand shut as she met the man in the middle of the lobby, “I’m afraid both Dr. Helsing and Dr. Bloxam are busy at the moment, but I am quite capable of handling whatever matter you’ve come here for.”

“I don’t mean to sound rude, miss, but I need to speak to an adult,” he eyed her up, her small stature as she glared up at him not intimidating to him in the slightest.

Her hands rested on her hips as she angled her head up at him, somehow managing to stare down her nose at the man who was a good bit taller than her, “For your information, this foundation was founded by my paternal second great grandmother and has been run by my maternal family for three generations. This place will be mine one day, so I would appreciate it if you would stop speaking to me like a child.” 

He raised his eyebrows at the twenty-one-year-old before him, “Then you must be Arabella Harker.”

“Van Helsing,” she corrected, taking the forms which he forced into her hands. Her eyes catching on the black words printed on the page. “False imprisonment? What is this about? What are you?”

He held out his hand for her to shake, but she stared at the offensive appendage, “I’m Frank Renfield with Hawkins and Wentworth, Count Dracula’s lawyer.” He pulled the pages forcibly from her hand, “Surely you remember me. Your father used to be a colleague of mine.”

She could have sworn her jaw hit the floor, but before she could respond a hand placed itself on her shoulder, halting any further words from herself, “Mr. Renfeild, I’m Dr. Bloxam, second in command to Miss Helsing’s mother, Dr. Helsing. If you’ll follow me, I will take you to see your client.”

Dr. Bloxham walked ahead of the attorney in the cheap suit who looked rather content to have gotten his way. Arabella stood in the lobby with her mouth hanging open like a dead fish. Once she regained her wits, she clutched the leather-bound book tighter in her hands and sprinted down the halls after them, leaning into Bloxham’s ear, “What are we going to do? Dracula will slaughter everyone on Britain.”

“Your mother will take care of this. There’s no need to worry,” the blonde replied as she pushed ahead, both women tossing a glance over their shoulders to glare at the attorney behind them, Arabella fighting back the urge to stick out her tongue.

When the three of them made their way into the holding cell, Arabella couldn’t take her eyes off of the vampire before her, completely ignoring the attorney who she despised for the simple fact that he knew her father and liked him. She just kept her eyes trained on the monster in the corner who stalked over to her while addressing her mother. He seemed to stare into her soul. Having not have seen him and shared a conversation with him in several days seemed to have made her forget how intense his eyes were as the stood only inches apart from one another, the light is the only thing which separated them.

“Besides, he hasn’t hurt anyone, has he?” Renfield wondered, catching the girl’s attention.

Her eyes landed on the needle discarded on the metal table next to her which Zoe had brought in to draw some of the Count’s blood to analyze it, “You’ve got to be joking? He’s a bloody vampire!” Zoe’s face was red with anger after the words she just spat, “How did you get online? You weren’t supposed to have internet access?”

“Well, Zoe,” Dracula smirked down at the younger Van Helsing in front of him before turning to face her mother, “you’ve been feeding me the blood of all of these technology-savvy young people and your daughter’s blood just happened to tell me the Wi-Fi password. It was my name.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Zoe huffed, her eyes befalling her child who still hadn’t taken her eyes off of the needle before her.

Dracula followed the path of Arabella’s eyes with his own, “Don’t you dare.”

Ari gave him a small smile, leaning ever so slightly against the metal table next to her as the lawyer and doctors chatted and bickered around her, fingers grasping the plastic apparatus which the needle was attached to. The medical-grade steel was thicker than any IV needle she had encountered in the past be it through medical training with the foundation or emergency room visits as a child, but she supposed a more heavy-duty needle would be necessary for a vampire. 

“Don’t do it,” Dracula growled through clenched teeth.

Without anyone other than the vampire noticing, she held the needle’s sharp edge to one of the veins on her wrist. She stared him down as he kept commanding her not to do what she was about to do in a hushed tone, but she of course ignored him, “Mr. Renfeild, I’m afraid you don’t understand the implications of setting a vampire free into the world. He has no self-control.”

“With all due respect, Miss Helsing,” the lawyer dismissed her, “but your father was trained in the law before deciding to switch career paths, so you should know that holding a man against his will is illegal.”

She nodded, shooting beast in the shadows a wicked grin, “But I also know that he cannot control himself.”

“He is a five-hundred-year-old man,” he retorted. “I’m sure he can control himself around a bit of blood.”

The sharp edge of the needle dug into a ripped the delicate skin on her wrist easily as sharp scissors would through paper, causing her to wince at the sensation. The edge cut deep enough that a steady stream of crimson liquid warmed her throbbing skin. Dracula hissed with frustration as she stepped into the shadows. 

The screams and orders for her to get back into the sunlight all blended as it was just her and the vampire in the shadows where the sun couldn’t reach, his hands clutching her body as he drew her nearer with such force her neck to twinge with pain. He brought her wrist up to his mouth, tongue darting out to caress her fingers which dripped with life-sustaining fluid. His mouth smeared with her blood crawled its way up her palm to latch onto the deep cut on her wrist to drain her.

“Down boy,” she spat, pressing the Bible in her hand to his forehead. He cowered away from her, but continued to tongue the blood off of his face while he stared at the dripping wound. Her laugh was almost maniacal as she watched him grovel for her blood like a starved dog for scraps.

“That’s enough,” the lawyer scowled as he stood between the girl and the vampire who was now cleaning the needle Arabella had dropped with his tongue. “Regardless of his bloodlust, he did not hurt you, Miss Harker. You did that to yourself.”

“It’s Van Helsing,” she reiterated, holding the lab coat Zoe had offered her to her wrist as tightly as she could, “and I think I still proved my point.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment! I can't wait to hear what you guys think.

“Where are you going?” Arabella chased after her mother down the corridor, her breath heaving in her chest from the amount of blood she had lost, far more than she had planned on, “Mom, what are we going to do?”

Zoe stopped in her tracks so suddenly that Arabella bumped into her like one would do in a cartoon, stumbling back to catch her balance, “It’s over, Arabella. Get your things together. I’m sending you back to the U.S. You’re not safe here anymore.”

Arabella stared up at her mother who had a hard expression on her face like she was keeping a secret from her, a similar look she had seen when she was nine years old and Zoe refused to tell Arabella the truth about her and her father’s marriage. The two were equal in stubbornness as they just watched each other with scowls on their brows, “You’re hiding something from me.”

Zoe turned on her heels as she unlocked her office door, entering without acknowledging the anger that was being injected into her through the daggers stabbing into her back from Arabella’s glare, “I said pack your things. I’ll take you to the airport tonight.”

“No, you will not,” Arabella growled. “I am twenty-one years old. I’m not a child. You can’t tell me what to do anymore.”

“Then you’ll move out of my apartment,” Zoe stared at her, eyes wide and full of an emotion Ari could not place. “I pay the rent, so I can tell you, the adult you are, to move out.”

The look on Arabella’s features was that of disgust. The two had just started rebuilding their relationship and here Zoe was, throwing it all away, “No. Quit pushing me away. What are you hiding from me?”

Zoe stared at the girl, shoulders falling from their place by her ears to relax where they naturally resided, “What you did was extremely dangerous. He could have killed you. What would I have done then?”

Arabella discarded the bloody lab coat she was pressing to her small wrist to grab a handful of tissues from Zoe’s desk to soak up the blood that still oozed from her laceration, but had slowed due to the clotting process. She’d need stitches, “I was trying to force that damn attorney into keeping Dracula here so he couldn’t hurt anyone. That’s what Aunt Agatha would have done.”

“You’re not her, Arabella!” Zoe yelled at the girl, clenching the edge of her metal desk so tightly that her knuckles turned white; a sign of aggression Arabella had never seen in her mother before, only her father. “Stop trying to save the world! You’re a twenty-one-year-old child. You’re too reckless. You might as well have just offered him your neck just like Agatha did.”

Arabella couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It was her mother who had told her stories of Sister Agatha Van Helsing, the hero of the family who gave her life to save Mina Murray, a young woman who was pregnant and didn’t know it, who made this foundation a possibility, Arabella’s own second great grandmother on her father’s side, “Agatha was a hero and you know it.”

“And it got her killed,” Zoe rebutted, ripping the bible from Arabella’s bloody fingers. “You hold onto her things and worship them. You wear her crucifix around your neck like you are her. You’re not and I don’t want you to die.”

The blood that still resided in her body was boiling with hatred for the woman who stood before her for acting as if none of this mattered, as if the release of this monster wasn’t detrimental for society, “If I die for such a noble cause, I will die willingly.”

“I’ll have Jack come in here to stitch you up so you quit bleeding everywhere.”

When Zoe abandoned her daughter in her office, Arabella collapsed into the cushy chair behind Zoe’s desk, hand pressing the now blood-soaked tissues harder into her skin. She couldn’t believe what she had just been told, completely insulted by her mother, a pain that seemed to hurt her more than any injury her father could cause with his fists.

She didn’t acknowledge Jack when he came in the room, wrapping his arms around her shaking form. She wouldn’t cry. She couldn’t cry and keep her dignity. She didn’t even flinch as Jack Seward sutured her bleeding wrist without any sort of numbing agent. Her nerve ending was too overstimulated to fire as the needle closed the wound, the edges around dark from bruising.

“When is Renfield coming to take Dracula away?” Arabella muttered without emotion in her voice.

Jack took her uninjured hand in his for a squeeze, “You need to let this go. You need to, Bella.”

“What time?”

“8:11, so in about thirty minutes,” he sighed, knowing full well that his young best friend was not the type to give up on anything. It was what made her so wonderful. It’s what he adored about her. “He’s obsessed with you. He’ll hurt you.”

She shook her head before standing to unlock the filing cabinet behind her which contained all of Sister Agatha’s research on the vampire before he had kidnapped her from the convent, “Then I’ll just have to kill him first, won’t I?”

Documents were shoved into a file and shoved into her bag which contained all of her belongings that had been held by the foundation to prevent her from contacting the outside world while participating in the donor program. She stormed into the administrative office where the vampire stood with his attorney, tracking device on his wrist being snipped off by a pair of scissors. She leaned in the doorway, watching with narrowed eyes full of detest. 

“Arabella,” the vampire cooed, not even the least bit worried about the dried drop of her blood on the corner of his mouth, “how sweet of you to see me off. How’s your wrist?”

The girl had her arms crossed at her chest as she made her way to stand inches from him as she did in his cell before holding up the stitched appendage for him to see, “Fine.” She reached into her pocket to pull out a blacked-out plastic Ziploc from the waistband of her leggings, “I thought you’d enjoy a little snack for your trip.” 

The count took the bag from her, studying her expression which was meant to antagonize him, reminding him so much of Agatha who had given him that same look one hundred a twenty-three years ago as she explained to him that he had lost, but he hadn’t lost, had he? He was alive and the nun was dead, “What is this?”

“A surprise,” her voice was sickly sweet with a twang he couldn’t place too a particular region in the world, so he assumed it was American.

“If that bag contains any religious objects that my client may find offensive, I will have you arrested for assault,” Renfield threatened as the vampire and Van Helsing girl stared at one another, her face hard and his covered in a small smile, seemingly adoring the view before him.

Arabella smiled back at the vampire, but she had a wicked plan up her sleeve, “I would never attempt to harm this man, Mr. Renfeild. I just thought he’s enjoying his leftovers, so I packed him a doggy bag.”

“How kind,” the lawyer grimaced.

“Yes,” Dracula mused, hand gliding over Arabella’s cheek. “I’ll see you at your mother’s funeral in a few months, Arabella, my love. You might need the shoulder to cry on.”

She pulled away from his grasp, “If you hurt her…”

“I don’t have to hurt her,” he chuckled, twirling a strand of her hair with his pale and claw-like fingers. “She has cancer. I don’t have to kill her for her to die.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh how the tension grows!!
> 
> Please comment!

A month passed quickly by Arabella who felt as if her life was in a sort of turmoil, having moved out of her mother’s apartment and in with Lucy Westenra and her mother, Mrs. Westenra gladly accepting the girl into her home after being told the story of how Zoe kicked Arabella out. She had tried living with Jack, but his incessant need for her and Zoe to make up proved rather aggravating. Arabella and Lucy had been sharing a room since Arabella moved in like they always did when they would spend the night together, sharing a bed and sharing clothes like actual sisters. Thanks to Quincy, however, Arabella often got the bed to herself.

“Try this on,” Lucy ordered Arabella who sat in her underwear on the edge of the bed, tossing a red satin dress in her face. “You’ll look so hot.”

She slipped the satin over her black lace-clad figure which clung to every curve of her body, smoothing the material with her red-painted nails which she had stopped biting a week or so ago, “Who are you trying to hook me up with now? I told you I’m taking a break from boys and sex.”

Lucy clasped a gold and ruby necklace around her throat which felt extremely tight, but that’s why it was called a choker, right? It was a thin chain that replaced the silver cross around her neck which Lucy messily discarded on the nightstand on Arabella’s side of the bed, “You’ll give up your little vow of abstinence when I introduce you to this guy I’ve met.”

“I don’t want any man you’ve already slept with,” Arabella huffed as she adjusted the red spaghetti straps on her shoulder, feeling almost uncomfortable in the soft dress, but it barely covered her rear, just long enough for her to dance and sit down in. She could forget about bending over. “And, aren’t you engaged? You shouldn’t be meeting men.”

Lucy turned around so that Arabella could zip up her rose gold sequin dress, “I haven’t slept with him. I’ve been only loyal to Quincy.”

“Sure,” Arabella scoffed as she watched Lucy reach for her phone with a smile when it buzzed, replying quickly. “You must love Quincy and he to you. He texts you a lot and you always look so happy.”

The other girl shoved a pair of too high black heels into Arabella’s waiting hands, “It’s not Quincy. It’s the guy I want you to meet. He saw our picture and became smitten. His name is D.”

“Just D?” Arabella questioned, slipping on the heels with ease. “How mysterious.”

“You don’t seem too impressed.”

“It’s hard to be impressed by a single letter,” the younger one sighed as she studied her reflection in the mirror before her. She looked stunning as she always did when she let Lucy make her over and curl her hair

Lucy let out a breathy laugh that she used to delight ever man she ever met, but it didn’t quite have the same effect on Arabella who knew it only meant trouble, the clasp of the curling iron clapping as Lucy wrapped a thin strand of Ari’s mile-long hair around the ceramic barrel, “He’s great Bells. He’s just your type: older, rich, with the sexiest brown eyes I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“You make me sound like a sugar baby,” Arabella said as she applied the red liquid lipstick that sat on Lucy’s vanity.

“You’ll be calling him daddy soon enough if he’s as interested in you as he seems to be,” Lucy sprayed down her curls with hairspray before dowsing Arabella’s too. “And we should start calling you Bella Swan, not Bella Van Helsing.”

Her face twisted in confusion as she stared at Lucy through the mirror, “What on earth are you talking about?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Lucy bent down and kissed Arabella’s cheek. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

Quincy had picked them up around midnight to drive them to the club which was crowded and bumped with the most popular songs, most of which she recognized snippets of from those TikTok dances which Lucy had forced her to learn which mainly consisted of swaying her hips. While Lucy ran off to grab drinks from the bar, Arabella danced with faceless men and women in the middle of the dancefloor, Quincy next to her as the floor lit up multiple colors in time with the beat of My Type by Saweetie, her hips swaying in time as well.

“Why didn’t you grab me a drink?” Arabella had to yell over the music at Lucy who now joined her fiancé. “I’m not meeting a guy without a drink in my hand. He’ll think I’m pregnant or something.”

“Don’t worry, Bella! He doesn’t drink, so you shouldn’t either.”

Arabella wasn’t surprised when Lucy and Quincy disappeared after the rest of Lucy’s posse showed up who she never really found herself comfortable around. The morality instilled in her by convent school and her viciously religious father kept her from sampling all the drugs they all enjoyed more than eating actual food, most of their diets consisting of cocaine and vodka sodas, but she couldn’t say she didn’t like a good vodka soda. So, she danced alone on the dancefloor, feeling completely flattered by the large number of men who asked her to dance with them.

Many of the men were age or so older than her and swayed with her, standing behind her with their hands on her hips, forcing her to grind a little harder on them than she had preferred, but she knew how this game was played. You dance, they buy you a drink, and then they try to take you home. Denying them never really blew over well after a drink was bought, so she was sure to refuse a drink to dance with the next man who placed his hands on her hips and called her beautiful, repeating the process over and over again while wishing her and Jack hadn’t cut ties. He always saved her in times like this, but they hadn’t spoken since they fought about Zoe.

She had screamed at him when she found out her mother had told Jack about her cancer and he didn’t bother to relay the information to her even as Zoe got sicker and sicker, yet Arabella blamed herself for not noticing how her mother began to struggle as she was too focused on sleeping around and drinking as Lucy had insisted she do because she was too young to be locked up in her mother’s house.

Arabella had stormed out of Jack’s flat while he called after her, asking her to be reasonable because Zoe was her mother and the only decent parent she had. She had told Jack to go and shove it. No real friend would keep a secret like that from someone who they claimed to be their best friend in the whole world, who was there for him when he fell apart as Quincy proposed to Lucy. Arabella had been there to pick up his broken pieces and put him back together, yet he had been lying to her for almost a year.

“She’s in the hospital, Ari. She doesn’t have much time left.”

“If she wanted me there,” Arabella had spit at the skinny doctor, throwing his new cellphone at him, “then she would have told me herself!”

“You look delicious,” a male voice cooed in her ear as he brought her hips back to meet his own. She had thanked the stranger as his fingers dug into her hips a bit tighter.

They danced song after song together, neither saying a word which she seemed to like. He smelt nice and he didn’t force her further against his crotch like most of these men did, so, when a slow song came on, some Shawn Mendes song, she turned to wrap her arms around his neck which wasn’t something she normally did. She usually sat these songs out.

As she turned, staring down at her shoes, she snaked her arms up the man’s chest, eyes finally meeting his when he halted her movements to stare at the raised, pink scar on her wrist, “You healed quite nicely, darling.”

“Count Dracula,” she breathed, heart racing in her chest.

He shushed her, pressing his lips to the line across her wrist, “Call me D. That’s what Lucy calls me.” As she tried to yank away from his grip, he pulled her closer to him, “Don’t make a scene, Ari. Am I saying that right: Ari? Just dance with me.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys! I am really hoping you enjoy this chapter. I am.
> 
> Please comment!!!

She didn’t know whether she should laugh or cringe at the irony that the DJ had put on In My Blood by Shawn Mendes as the vampire pulled her into his chest. It didn’t matter how much she pulled away from him. He kept her arms intertwined around the back of his neck with a tight grip, pressing her body flush with his. Even in her heels, which were higher than most women’s shoes in the club, he still towered over her, head barely level with his chest. His hands sent chills down her spine as one rested on the small of her back and the other resting just below her right breast on her ribcage.

“How did you find me?” Arabella muttered, knowing he could hear her soft question over the loud music.

His lips brushed against her ear in his reply which made part of her want to reel back in disgust, but the other half which Lucy had conditioned to crave male attention leaned into him, “Though you’re darling Lucy, of course.”

“And how did you meet her?” Their eyes met, his deep brown irises flashing multiple colors as the lights changed around them. “She wasn’t part of the donor program at the foundation.”

When he dipped her, her hair whipped around her and her breath caught in her throat, tight satin stretching with each of the movements he led her into, “That Dr. Seward fellow.” He reached into his pocket and held up the iPhone with the small crack in the corner which was caused by Arabella pushing Jack off of a bench in the middle of the park during a picnic, “I stole his phone.”

Her eyes rolled as she stared up into his eyes, brows furrowed, “Why am I not surprised? I just assumed he lost it.”

“No. I met Miss Westenra after she called the young doctor’s phone. I found her quite intriguing, a good snack, but I was more interested when you had called her and this little picture popped up on the screen,” Dracula held up the phone for her to see again, showing off the picture of Lucy and Arabella from the night her and Jack had arrived at the Jonathan Harker Foundation to meet the vampire who was detained.

“You bit her?”

Lucy and Arabella had been wearing their matching dresses, Lucy’s was pink while Arabella’s was black. They were pressed chest to chest while Ari stared at the camera with a huge, drunken smile on her face, white ‘21st Birthday’ sash across her chest, words, and numbers embossed in silver glitter. She had one heel-clad foot popped off the ground while Lucy had her lips against her cheek, both girls holding hands. They looked almost like sisters, but Arabella’s pale skin would have dashed any thought that they were related. She had been so happy that night, had no worries as that vampire had not discovered his obsession of her yet.

“You just like the fact that I was barely dressed in that photo,” She huffed at him, finally giving in to his advances to hold her close to him. He wouldn’t bite her here. There were too many witnesses.

His finger swiped left on the screen, “But I think I much prefer this one of you. I like how innocent you look.”

By this point, they stood completely still in the middle of the dancefloor, surrounded by loving couples while his arms still held her close. This picture was of Arabella sitting on the sofa in Zoe’s apartment in a blue dress which was spattered with daisies and covered her knees, chest, and had a tie around her waist which was knotted into a neat little bow. Her legs were tucked up under her as she smiled at Jack who was holding the phone up at her. It was a goofy grin with too many teeth and her eyes squeezed shut. She barely had on any makeup and Agatha’s bible rested in her lap.

That picture had been taken three years ago right when she moved back in with Zoe, meek and innocent-looking, “I love how you have two sides. You’re very interesting.”

“How much time have you spend staring at my pictures, Count Dracula?” She sighed, “I’ve taken a lot of pictures of myself on that phone. Over one hundred, I’m sure.”

“Each one more beautiful than the last,” his hand cupped her chin, squishing her cheeks and it made her lips pucker.

Another set of arms twisted around her waist, Lucy’s chin resting on her shoulder, “You two seem to be hitting it off. I told you she was a feisty one, didn’t I, D?”

It was then that the vampire finally let go of her waist, Arabella taking the opportunity to pull herself away from him, but his eyes never left her, “Feisty indeed.” He gave her a disgustingly sweet smile which made her feel extremely cold and exposed in the tiny red slip dress Lucy had put her in, “Shall I buy you a drink, Lucy, to thank you for introducing Arabella and me?”

Arabella took the opportunity to escape. She’d get an earful from Lucy later, but that was a risk she was willing to take. She grabbed her bag and headed for the back door where she knew she would find an empty alley clouded with cigarette smoke and an easy getaway. She reached in and grasped the pepper spray in her hand. She wasn’t interested in becoming Dracula’s next bite to eat. She didn’t know how effective the liquid in the glitter-coated canister would be, but she would have to try.

He seized her wrist, making her drop the only defense she had. She was at a great disadvantage here. He was so much bigger than her and so much taller than her. He could easily push her against the wall and drain her of her blood. She knew he liked the way she tasted. He twirled her around to meet his glare, eyes red around the dark orbs that were his beautiful irises. In the dim light of the alley, he seemed almost angelic looking. Any woman who saw him there with her would have been jealous, but they didn’t know what he was or what he was capable of.

Arabella’s heart pounded in her chest and her head throbbed. She had no defense against him anymore. Agatha’s crucifix was no longer around her throat and the ruby necklace Lucy had forced her to wear would not affect the man who was stalking up to her, forcing her into a corner. The bible wasn’t conveniently in her bag. It stayed next to the bed on the nightstand. The only thing on her person at the moment was the condom Lucy had insisted that Ari stuff in her bra just in case things worked out well with D.

“That was a nasty trick you pulled,” he growled into her hair as he pushed her up against the brick on the building they were just in.

She held her chin out defiantly, breath heaving out of her nostrils, “I can’t die before killing you first.”

His chuckled was dark and caused her to awkwardly join in as he pressed harder against her, her hands pressed firmly against his pectoral muscles which felt firm through his shirt and sports coat, “Just like Agatha. She was a witty woman with this need to understand me and stop me.”

“And kill you,” she whispered against his lips that were too close to her own. “I can promise you, Count Dracula, I will be successful in finishing her work.”

One of his sharp nails ran down her middle, starting at the neckline of her dress right between her breasts, trailing down her cleavage and abdomen, stopping when he reached her navel. His eyes never left her electric green ones which seemed to glow in the dark and that enticed him, “It would be so easy, you know, to just drink you right here and leave you dead in this alley, but I like a good challenge.”

“All of the best things come to those who wait,” she countered, a nasty grin on her face that came when he pressed his forehead to her own.

He smiled back at her, but his grin was not as hateful as hers. It seemed almost loving and she couldn’t deny the weakness in her knees when he crushed her lips with her own, pulling her to arch against him with an arm wrapped in the curvature of her back. She was so wrapped up in it, have not given into Lucy’s push for her to sleep with as many men as she could in the past month and a half. She almost forgot who she was locked in an embrace with when his hand cupped her breast, slipping between the satin of her dress and the sheer lace of her bra. His fingers grazed against her nipple, sliding the aluminum packet from its place under her breast. 

“Do you want me?” His voice was rough in her ears and made the hair on the back of her neck stand completely on end.

“Absolutely not,” she breathed, pressing her mouth back to his, tongues fighting over who would win this battle, hers nicking itself on one of his fangs. 

His kiss turned into a frenzy as he tasted her blood in his mouth, his tongue stroking the little spot that was oozing crimson liquid until her blood clotted and stopped flowing from the place his fang pricked. He growled into her mouth. They both wondered if this was what heaven was like as the opiate-like effects of him sipping her blood from her body started to seep over the girl and he tasted it in her blood. 

When he pulled away from her, her mouth tried to follow him, but when the packet was held up between their faces, her eyes went wide, “Then, you won’t be needing this tonight, darling.”

He slipped the condom into his pocket as the back door opened as a couple stumbled through, lips locked and hands exploring the other’s body. Dracula and the girl stared at the couple who took turns with their backs pressed against the bricks as Arabella’s had just been. She took his focus as an opportunity to slip from where he had her trapped in the corner, slipping under his arm. Before he could grab her, she had a piece of a broken wooden pallet in her hands, the splintering edges turned towards him, challenging him to come closer to her or think about touching the couple that now shared the dingy ally. In a blink of her eye, he was gone.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment!!!

Arabella had snuck past Lucy, Quincy, and the others who sat at the bar, taking shot after shot. Normally, she would find herself there with them even though the rest of Lucy’s friends weren’t her favorite company. She liked the competition of being able to outdrink most of them even though size-wise she was a good bit smaller, but she had other things on her mind like the vampire who had just pinned her to the wall of the back alley and kissed her senseless, but her mind was still able to convince her that she needed to get out of there and into a place he wouldn’t be invited into and wouldn’t want to go into, so she took an uber back to Lucy’s home just outside of the city.

Mrs. Westenra was very religious and kept crosses scattered around the house. The vampire wouldn’t want to go into the house. It would give her plenty of time to think and plenty of quiet. When she arrived back at the house, the older woman sat in the living room knitting, greeting her with a small smile, “Is Lucy with you or with that Quincy boy?”

“They’re still at the club,” Arabella smiled softly. “I’m only home because I’m not feeling that great and wanted to lay down.”

The woman went back to her knitting, not even commenting on how disheveled Arabella looked. Zoe would have made a smart comment about her look with a little grin on her mouth before asking if the guy was any good. She kind of missed the banter she had with her mother, but Arabella couldn’t find it in herself to forgive Zoe just yet. It still hurt that she kept cancer a secret for so long.

Back in Lucy’s bedroom, the crucifix now replaced the ruby necklace around Arabella’s neck as she slipped out of the satin the clung to her body with all of its might. She nearly had to peel it off thanks to the layer of moisture that covered her skin from all of the dancing and nerves that had come with her night out. The cotton shorts and matching top of green were much more comfortable once she wiped off the spackle Lucy had put on her face and her long hair had been thrown up into a bun.

Agatha’s notes on the occult were spread out across Lucy’s pink bedspread as Arabella tried to decipher the Dutch as best as she could. She knew the nun had spoken English as well and Bella wanted to curse her late aunt for not transcribing her findings into English rather than Agatha’s native tongue, a language Ari barely had an elementary understanding of, the words ‘vampire’ and ‘kruisbeeld’ standing out to her as they were not too different from their English counterparts. 

Kan niet binnenkomen zonder een uitnodiging. Cannot enter without invitation.

De kus van de vampier kan ertoe leiden dat iemand hullucinaat. The kiss of the vampire can cause someone to hallucinate.

Dracula verzamelt bruiden in een poging een erfgenaam te produceren. Dracula collects brides in an attempt to produce an heir. 

There were countless ideas on how this beast worked including his affinity to religious items and how he could be killed with a stake through his heart. Most of these were simple lore from centuries-old tales of vampires, some dating back from before Dracula even became a vampire in the first place. She was sure of that, but creating an heir was something new to her as she read over the thankfully English notes Agatha took while she interviewed Jonathan Harker, a bride of the count so the notes say. Perhaps Dracula’s goal was to induct Arabella into the same league of brides. Who knew how many the monster had throughout the centuries?

Arabella had spent all night rewriting Sister Agatha’s notes into her journal, be sure to translate those that weren’t in English with the utmost care. She didn’t even notice when the sun rose until Lucy stumbled into the room looking more undone than Arabella had when she had come in around three the previous night. Arabella had to quickly gather the papers around her as Lucy tried to plop on the bed on top of them.

“You and D left early in the night,” Lucy snickered as she shimmied out of her dress, not wearing a single scrap of material under her dress. “You two must have enjoyed each other for him to have gotten you out of your panties before the last call.” She ran her fingers over Arabella’s neck and the silver chain that rested there, “You really shouldn’t wear a nun’s cross after the acts of sin you committed a few hours ago.”

Ari sighed as she placed her journal and the yellowed notes in the drawer of her nightstand, tossing a towel at Lucy so she wouldn’t have to look at her naked friend. The two shared a lot, but she’d like to keep some mystery in their friendship, “I didn’t sleep with him Luc.”

“Why not? I would if it weren’t for boring Quincy,” Lucy huffed with a laugh, wrapping the fluffy towel around her body. “Did you… you know?”

“I just told you we didn’t sleep together,” Ari grunted as Lucy shoved her off the bed.

“That’s not what I meant,” She unclipped the sparkling choker around her neck to reveal a jagged scar where her jugular vein resided.

Ari stared at her friend with horror in her eyes as she touched the spot on Lucy’s neck, “I thought he was lying when he said he bit you.”

“You really should have let him,” Lucy sighed as she batted Arabella’s fingers away to run her own over the raised part of her skin as if reliving the feeling. “It was the most exquisite experience I’ve ever had. He let me see things I thought I never would. It was way better than any man I’ve ever been with.”

“You need to stay away from him, Lucy. I’m serious,” Arabella exclaimed as she took Lucy’s hands, trying to explain to her the danger she was in.

Lucy jerked away from Arabella, standing to gain some sort of dominance in the situation, “I can’t believe you would think I’d try to take the man I set you up with. I might be a slut, but I’m not a bad friend.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's some spice in this chapter, but nothing explicit. Just letting you know in case you don't like spicy.
> 
> Please comment!!!

It was another night alone in her and Lucy’s bedroom for Arabella who chewed her nails and cuticles while she stared at her laptop, wrapped up in Lucy’s comforter, some horror movie playing before her eyes. Lucy and the rest had been out every single night in the past two weeks and Ari had refused to go. If she was going to kill Dracula, she couldn’t afford being slaughtered, so she stayed home with her cross around her neck. When her right thumb was in her mouth, her phone rang, causing her to jump and pull off more cuticle than she had intended, cursing under her breath at the pain. 

She picked up her phone, staring at Jack’s name and picture lighting up the darkness around her. His picture smiled back at her. She did love that man. He was her best friend and that made her feel guilty for not having spoken to him in almost two months, so she slid the little green circle along its track to answer his call.

“Hey, mister. How are you?” Ari sighed, nestling into the mountain of pillows against her back, “I’ve missed you.”

The chuckle on the other end of the line was too deep and raspy to be Jack’s and the sound of Jack’s voice didn’t cause a chill to roll down her spine, “I’ve missed you too, Arabella.” Her silence and panicked breaths made the vampire smile, “Don’t worry, darling, I haven’t touched your precious doctor. I’ve just kept his phone number. Honestly, I’m surprised you didn’t, what does Lucy call it, block the number.” 

“Forgive me, but I’ve been rather stressed out lately,” Bella sighed as she pulled the blankets closer to her chest and her fingers played with the cross around her neck. “What do you want, Dracula?”

The sound of his breath in her ear made her want to twitch and throw the covers off of her body, “What do you have to be stressed about?”

“Maybe the fact that my best friend has decided to be a living Capri-sun and my mother is dying,” Arabella huffed. “Just tell me what you want from me or I’ll hang up the phone and block this number. Then you won’t be able to harass me anymore until I track you down to stake you myself.”

She could almost hear his overly-confident smile which he gave her on so many occasions during his time at the foundation when he would torment her about the way she pronounced certain words with the American twang in her voice, “I want to take you to dinner.”

“Do you want to take me to dinner or eat me for dinner?” She snorted with the laugh that she couldn’t suppress. If he thought a dinner invitation would be taken without the thought that he’d be eating her, then he’d be mistaken. 

“I want to take you to a restaurant so that you can eat and we can talk,” he huffed back at her. “Trust me or don’t, Arabella, but I will have a car pick you up in thirty minutes. You can wear that horrid cross of yours if you wish. Just keep it under your shirt. I trust you were raised with manners.”

She didn’t bother to look attractive, but she refused to look unpresentable, dressing in a simple white blouse and a pair of black skinny jeans, no holes, that accentuated the shape of her legs. The black flats on her feet were extremely comfortable and made her feel less on edge because she knew she could comfortably run from him in these shoes if she had to. Her makeup was simple and just enough to look like she was a living human being who wouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb even in the nicest of restaurants he could take her to. She still didn’t know where, but she made sure to pack a stake and her bible in her purse, her crucifix around her throat, but hidden under the thin material of her blouse.

The car had arrived just when he said it would, telling Mrs. Westenra that she wouldn’t be out too late and would be home soon. She slipped into the back seat, the driver didn’t speak to her and she didn’t speak to him, but she did enjoy the comfort of this car. Renting this vehicle to pick her up much have cost him a pretty penny. Let him spend his money on her. If she got what she wanted tonight, he’d be dead and she’d be free of the responsibilities his existence was forcing on her. She just wanted to be twenty-one and party and enjoy her life without the looming threat of the death of her friends and family hanging over her.

She was escorted to the table he was sitting at, his features lit up by candlelight at the Hélène Darroze at The Connaught. She had never been there before. It was one of the most expensive places in London, “You look wonderful, Arabella, but I have to say I’m rather disappointed you’re not wearing that red dress from the other night.”

“You are a pig, aren’t you?” her eyes rolled as she sat across from him, ankles crossing under the table.

He reached across the table to take her hand in his, staring into her skeptical green eyes which dared him to try anything funny with this many people around them, “Well, excuse me for being enthralled by your figure. I thought that was a compliment women of this day enjoyed.” He flipped her arm over to trace the scar there, remembering the way her blood flowed from the laceration and into his mouth and how delightful she tasted on his tongue. “Your generation does seem to parade their bodies around quite regularly.” 

“We aren’t bound by Victorian codes of conduct here in the twenty-first century,” she muttered, picking at the salad the server had placed in front of her. “Tell, Count Dracula, why did you bring me here? Do you plan on making me your next bride?”

His eyes watched her slide the fork across her lips as she took a bite of her food, her tongue darting out to clean up the small smear of vinaigrette on her pouty bottom lip, “That would require me turning you into a vampire and you becoming completely submissive to me.”

“That will never happen,” she exclaimed with the prongs of her fork pointing towards him. “I will never be your bride. You may have gotten close with Jonathan Harker, but you won’t get so lucky with me.”

His head turned to the side as she searched her salad for a crouton, “How do you know about Johnny?”

Arabella reached into her back and slid him the laminated pages from Agatha’s interview of Jonathan Harker. His eyes quickly scanned over the pages then eyed her up, “You seemed surprised that I have access to these.”

“A bit,” he agreed, sliding the pages back to her, “but I suppose they are your birthright, written by your aunt about your grandfather. It is rather funny how both families came together to create you, a girl who is completely Agatha only for such wit and talent to be ruined by Johnny’s disgusting need for love.”

“I don’t need to be loved,” she growled against the glass in her hand that was filled with the most delicious water she had ever tasted in her life.

Her reaction made him grin, “And there is Agatha’s short temper.” She gave him another glare over the rim of her glass as she took another sip, “And you do seek love. Your childhood of being passed from parent to parent is what caused you to sleep around after you turned eighteen in hopes to find the man who would take care of you for the rest of your life. You subconsciously thought you did when I kissed you as you always do when a new man takes charge of you and your body.” He could feel her anger radiating off of her through her heated glower, “Unfortunately, you have failed to realized that I will take care of you for eternity just like I would have done with Agatha if she didn’t try to burn me alive by blowing up the Demeter.”

“You ate a psychologist before this meeting, didn’t you?” she whispered, feeling the turmoil he had created within her mind.

“Not any psychologist, my love. It was your therapist,” his grin held so many emotions which he wanted her to comprehend, but she could only focus her mind on the one that meant he wasn’t lying to her. She knew him well enough to know when he was lying. 

She spent countless hours with him while he was detained by the Jonathan Harker Foundation, “And why should I believe your indecent proposal? You aren’t one for romance from what I’ve read in Agatha’s journals.”

“Keep in mind that she wrote those before she met me,” he reminded her, snapping for the server to refill her water which caused her to chastise him and his way of treating restaurant staff. “I could have fallen in love with that woman had she not died on me.” She couldn’t meet his eyes and she couldn’t think of a witty rebuttal when he took her hand again, “You’re so much more like her than you know, but you lack her inhibitions set you apart.” Her fork took another rough stab at the lettuce on her plate, “To be clear, I’m talking about your sex drive.”

Her mouth fell open with a defensive laugh that dripped with how offended she felt, “You do disgust me.”

His laugh caused her to fill with rage, the only thing stopping her from slapping him was the large group of people around them who were chatting and eating. She couldn’t even hide her anger long enough to thank the waiter who set a plate of sautéed shrimp in front her, jabbing one of the cooked crustaceans with her fork and popping it in her mouth. 

“You must know that I could taste how you wanted me on your blood the other night,” he smiled at her, but she refused to respond to his advances, thanking the server who brought the bill. “Had I not been extremely thirty, I probably would have brought you back to my flat.”

“No, you wouldn’t have,” she muttered as she began to play with her food like a child who was denied dessert. “You’re a man who seeks complete control and inviting a girl back to your place does not allow you to prevent her from coming back.”

“They don’t come back if you kill them,” he sighed, foot slipping between her crossed ankles under the long tablecloth.

She kicked his foot away rather roughly, but she didn’t care when his eyes flashed red at her, “And did you plan on killing me so I wouldn’t come back?”

“Not before I got the chance to use that thing you have under that wonderful left breast of yours,” he whispered, enjoying the way her face flushed at the memory of his fingers grazing over her nipple.

She didn’t remember how the two of them had gotten back to the modern minimalist style flat of his whose walls were painted a slate grey with hints of crimson around the room, her back pressed to one of those tapestries on the wall. Her hands were tangled in the black mass of his hair, thick and soft between her fingers. His mouth was wet and hot against her ear as he took the shell of her ear between his lips, the sound of his breath shooting endorphins down her spine to her stomach. She didn’t protest when he picked her up, wrapping her legs around his waist with ease.

Her mind came out of its haze when her back his the sheets of his bed, the soft scent of earth floating around her. She held her breath as he mouthed his way down her chest and stomach as he unbuttoned her blouse, “Stop.”

He looked confused, but did as she said. He was a monster, but not that kind of monster. Before he could open his mouth to question her word, she was out of his bed and bedroom, slamming the door to his flat behind her before buttoning her blouse. What the hell did she just do?


	14. Chapter 14

She hadn’t expected Jack to pick her up so quickly off of the side of the road without a single question, so Arabella sat in his passenger seat without saying a single word, lipstick slightly smeared and the buttons on her blouse buttoned in a mess of knots. She had just wanted to cover her chest before she stepped out into the night.

Neither Arabella nor Jack said a single word as he drove her back to Lucy’s house on the outskirts of town, Jack thinking the worst had happened to Ari as her bitten fingernails shakily buttoned her shirt the right way, smoothing out the wrinkles in the thin fabric. He took one of her shaking hands in his when she finished with her shirt, bringing it to his lips to kiss her knuckles, meaning to soothe her fried nerves. He wanted to wipe the stray tear on her cheek away, but the incessant buzzing of her cellphone caught his attention.

“Bella,” Jack whispered without taking his eyes off the road, “you should probably get that.”

She shook her head, having seen Jack’s name on the screen the first couple of times it had started to ring, knowing it was the vampire, “How’s my mom? Please tell me she’s okay.”

Jack shifted the car into park, turning to face his friend, eyes hard with determination as he took her face in his hands, “What happened to you? What did Lucy force you into doing?”

“Nothing,” Arabella sighed, looking anywhere except Jack’s eyes as she still felt the way Dracula had kissed down her middle, the way his lips felt on hers, soft and wet. “Is Mom okay?”

Jack wrapped Ari up in a tight hug, “She’s surviving, but she misses you.”

Arabella fell into Jack’s embrace, body racked with sobs. She didn’t know how to feel. She knew the guilt that was bubbling up inside of her for not having spoken to her mother in months, but her feelings about the other events of the night were even more confusing. Her head screamed at her for stopping the actions that were going on in the vampire’s bed, but she also felt what she knew as disgust for herself for seemingly catching feelings for the monster who she was sure just saw her as a meal.

“Do you want to go see her?” Jack wondered as he pushed Arabella off of him and back into her seat, wiping the tears on her cheeks away with his thumbs. “Do you want me to come with you?”

Bella shook her head, stepping out of Jack’s car, “I don’t want you to go with me. It’s not fair for you to have to run interference between us all the time. I’ll just take Lucy’s car.” The look in Jack’s eyes at the mention of their friend forced Ari to sigh, leaning up against the roof as she ducked her head back in, “She’s really happy with Quincy, Jack. She’s out with everyone now, enjoying her last week as a bachelorette.”

“And what will you do when she’s married? Are you just going to live with her mother for the rest of your life?” Jack asked, his voice stained with a bit of hatred for Arabella who just wanted to forget what was going on, living in a fantasy world. “Or will you move in with the guy who had you a mess not too long ago, lipstick smeared and crying? He’s just like your father, Bells! Can’t you see that?”

Her hands gripped the door frame, slamming it shut with all of the force she could muster before leaning in through the window, green eyes burning from the tears. “He’s nothing like my father,” she spat, not knowing if she was defending the vampire or her father in that single sentence, storming down the driveway and into the house.

Through all of the emotions flooding through her veins, she did her best not to slam anything in the Westenra house around. She was still a guest there and Mrs. Westenra was still asleep, knitting laying discarded on the coffee table. Lucy’s room was empty just as Bella had expected, stripping out of her clothes to steam herself in the en suite bathroom, the shower turned up as hot as it would go.

She didn’t hiss as the scolding water ran over her, dousing her hair and body. Her hair laid flat against her skin as she pushed the drenched strands off of her face, scrubbing it with cleanser. The way she scrubbed at herself was enough to make her skin raw, scraping the purple loofah against her reddened skin. She was trying to wash the night away, wash away the feeling of Dracula’s hands on her body and his mouth on hers, tasting the tang of her blood as she scrubbed her lips the abrasive side of the loofa. She felt disgusting, but she could still remember the way he looks at her with her back pressed up against his bedroom door. He had stared down at her look she was the most beautiful thing in the universe, a look she never got often from any of the men she had dated.

She pushed her thoughts aside as the chilly air from the bedroom wrapped around her towel-clad body while she searched for clothes to throw on, settling on skinny jeans and an old sweatshirt, Nike, plain grey, the small USA printed above her left breast in red, white, and blue.

“Hi,” Ari smiled at the nurse sitting behind the desk, “I’m here to see my mom, Zoe Van Helsing? Can you tell me which room she’s in?”

Her red nails clicked nervously on the desktop, trying to remain in good spirits as the nurse gave her a small sneer before glancing back at her computer to type ‘Helsing’ into the database, “Oncology, fifth floor, room 533.”

“Thank you,” Bella grinned, trying not to take the dirty look she received personally.

The elevator was quiet apart from her clicking nails on the handrail which she clung to for dear life, white knuckles and all, terrified the metal box she was in would drop five stories and kill her, but she kept her mind on what she was going to say to her dying mother she refused to come to see for the past three months all because Zoe had refused to tell her that she had cancer, Arabella having to find out through the vampire.

Unsurprisingly, Zoe was asleep when Arabella crept into the room, the digital clock on the table next to the hospital bed reading 3:45 AM. Bella sat by the window, scooting the chair closer to her sleeping mother so she could take her cold hand. It would have worried Ari had the room not been freezing when she stepped in and had she not felt a pulse under her fingertips when she took Zoe’s hand, but she bowed her head anyways and closed her eyes, praying to her God that Zoe would make it out of this and that she would forgive her for being absent during this time. 

“Ari,” Zoe’s voice was scratchy, her other hand petting over Arabella’s still slightly damp hair, “what are you doing?”

She muttered a quick ‘amen’ under her breath before smiling up at Zoe who looked so tired and so pale, not the same strong woman who raised her, “I wanted to see you. I hope you don’t mind that I’m here.”

The small sniffle Arabella let out broke Zoe’s heart, scooting over to pat the free space on the bed, “Come on. That chair can’t be comfortable for you to sleep in.” Arabella gave Zoe a small smile before kicking off her shoes and climbing into her mother’s bed as a child would on a stormy night, scooching under the blankets and placing her head on her mother’s shoulder and under her chin, arms curled up at her chest while Zoe threw an arm over Ari’s shoulders, “I’m glad you’re here. I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you too, mom.”


	15. Chapter 15

“So, where have you been staying?” Zoe asked as she twisted Arabella’s hair in her fingers.

Ari turned around in the chair she was sitting next to the bed, causing the braid Zoe was putting her hair in to fall into a wavy curtain down her back and around her face, “I’ve been staying with Lucy.” Her words were slow and careful, knowing how Zoe felt about Lucy. “I stayed with Jack for a month or so, but we couldn’t stop fighting and you know how much Mrs. Westenra loves me.”

She could tell from the slow inhale of breath and closed eyes that her mother was unhappy with her living arrangements, but she didn’t say a word about it. Zoe was the one who kicked Arabella out of the apartment. She didn’t leave by her own free will, “Any word on Dracula? I hope he’s left you alone.”

Ari stood up and grabbed her phone off of the nightstand, reading the hundreds of texts from Jack’s old number asking if she was alright and where she ran off to and how it wasn’t safe for a girl her age to run off like that in the dark, but she ignored them, “Mom, you’re dying. He isn’t your problem anymore. Let me take care of this.”

“You can’t save the world, Arabella,” Zoe chastised. “He’s a five-hundred-year-old warlord. You’re a twenty-one-year-old girl.”

Bella didn’t even look up from her phone, reading the text that just came through from the vampire whose ears must have been burning and it read: If you don’t respond to me, I will come to find you.

Her fingernails clicked on the small keyboard on her iPhone screen: Good luck with that. The sun’s out.

She slid her phone across the table before sitting in front of her mother, taking both of Zoe’s hands in hers, “Mom, I need you to trust me. I can do this.”

Zoe gave a huff as she met Ari’s eyes, but she wasn’t in the mood to start a fight with the girl, choosing to kiss her forehead instead, “Why don’t you go downstairs and get us some lunch, hmm? My purse is in the armoire.”

“Are you sure you can have whatever? They didn’t restrict your diet?” Bella asked as she fumbled through the mess that was Zoe’s purse for her credit card.

“I’m dying, Bella,” Zoe gave a small laugh at her daughter who narrowed her eyes at the offensive’ word. “Go, on! I want a nice, greasy cheeseburger.”

Arabella rolled her eyes before shutting the door behind her, her cellphone sitting on the bedside table next to Zoe who was starting to be annoyed by her phone’s constant buzzing, so she picked it up to put it on silent. The caller ID showed Zeke’s number, the young gay man Arabella had befriended through Lucy, notifications on Ari’s screen showing that he had tried calling twenty times, so she answered.

“Hello?”

“Who is this?” The guy’s voice seemed panicked. “Where’s Bella?”

“This is her mother,” Zoe clarified, shifting in her spot on the bed as she felt the man’s fear. “She’s getting us something to eat. Is everything alright?”

Zeke’s breath was heavy and caught in his throat with a small sniffle, “It’s Lucy. She’s sick, Mrs.Van Helsing, like really sick, She won’t tell anyone what happened or what’s wrong. She keeps asking for Ari and I just really think she needs to come home and check on her.”

“Zeke, slow down. Tell me what happened,” Zoe tried to soothe, but the boy continued. 

“Just tell Ari to hurry up. This is not good,” the line went dead.

The door opened and Bella held up a huge paper bag full of burgers and fries with two large cups of soda in a tray in her other hand. Her smile was triumphant as she held it up like a prize, “I’ve brought you the ideal American lunch.” She shoved several fries into her mouth before mumbling, “God, I missed McDonald’s fries.” 

“I thought I told you to go downstairs and get hospital food,” Zoe laughed as she opened the box Arabella handed her.

Bella pouted as she sat down on the end of the bed, shoving more of the fries into her mouth, “But I wanted McDonald’s.”

“Zeke called,” Zoe’s amused expression vanished with her words as she snatched the bag from Bella’s grip. “It was about Lucy.”

Ari huffed and took an angry sip of her drink, “I told him I’m not doing the bachelorette week. I hate those other girls Lucy hangs around and I’m tired of them trying to pressure me into doing whatever drugs they’re into today.”

“Lucy’s sick, very sick according to Zeke,” Arabella’s face mutated into that of horror, only imagining what Dracula could have done to her after Ari abandoned him last night. He could have done anything to get back at her. “You should go if it’s half as bad as he says it is.”

Arabella shook her head, throwing herself back on the bed with an irritated sigh, “I can’t leave you. Lucy will be fine.”

“Bella,” Zoe took her hand that gripped the box of French fries, “I’m dying, but Lucy isn’t and she will remember that you didn’t check on her. It might strain your friendship.” Arabella gave her a funny look, but it held so much sadness because she knew how sick Zoe was and how little time she had left, “Please go, Bells. I promise I won’t die before you get back.”

“You’re not funny,” Bella huffed as she threw on one of Zoe’s blouses, her sweatshirt smelling too much of a hospital for her liking. “I’ll be back tonight, okay?”

“I’ll be fine for tonight. How about you come by tomorrow morning? I have treatment later today, anyways,” Zoe stood from her bed to wrap Arabella in a tight hug.

“Okay,” Bella sighed, giving Zoe a fake smile before kissing her cheek. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment!!!

Arabella pulled into the drive of the Westenra home only to see Jack doing the same, “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see my friend,” Jack huffed as Bella squeezed past him to enter the home first before tossing a heated glare over her shoulder. “Zeke said she won’t see a doctor.”

“Don’t see why he called you. I’m perfectly capable of doing any sort of exam,” Arabella huffed as she knocked softly on Lucy’s bedroom door. “Hey, Luc, are you awake?” Lucy’s hum from the other side of the door gave her the go-ahead to open it, but she faintly wondered why she even did in the first place. It had been her room too for the past couple of months.

Lucy laid in the bed in a sweatsuit, something Lucy never wore even on her worst days. She looked so pale and lifeless that Bella and Jack would have assumed she was dead had it not been for the ragged breaths escaping her mouth and nostrils. Bella sat on her side of the bed, the back of her hand checking Lucy’s temperature which was abnormally cool even with the air conditioning blasting overhead. Jack sat near Lucy in the chair next to her side of the bed, feeling her pulse through her wrist.

“She was fine last night,” Arabella muttered as she brushed the dark curls from Lucy’s sweaty forehead. “When the limo picked her up, she was pre-gaming with Zeke in the kitchen. Nothing was wrong.”

Jack gave her a small glare from the other side of the room, “Why didn’t you go with them? Oh, right, you were too busy getting handsy with some abusive stranger.”

“You don’t know half of the shit I’ve been through in the best few months, Jack Seward,” Arabella spit as she scooted past him to throw open the curtains, letting the sun in. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to wash the smell of the hospital out of my hair.”

Jack listened as the shower started and he heard the jets change tones as she stepped under them. It was then that he went back to inspecting Lucy, counting how many times her heart was beating per minute. It was abnormally low, so low he could barely detect a pulse at all, but the fact that she still wore he glitzy choker with her sweats was odd to Jack who fingered the material away from her throat to reveal a jagged scar.

“Perv,” Lucy muttered under her breath as she allowed Jack to remove the necklace.

His finger traced the raised line of flesh as he listened for the water of the shower to stop running. He had a few questions for Arabella and how she could be so reckless. Jack couldn’t think of another explanation for the mark on Lucy’s neck other than that Dracula had gotten to her.

Jack stood next to the bed with his arms crossed over his chest as Arabella stepped out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her body and another wrapped around her hair, “I was hoping you’d be gone by the time I got out. I should have known better, though, that you wouldn’t leave the object of your obsession alone.”

“I need to talk to you privately,” Jack growled, dragging her out of the room and into the spare room. “Have you seen her neck?”

Bella sighed, gripping the towel around her even tighter. Her head swam with images of the vampire while she was in his bed and while he was cowering from the light while her blood dripped into his mouth that day at the Jonathan Harker Foundation, “I have.”

“And you didn’t think to call your mother or anyone else at the Harker Foundation? This is Dracula,” Jack was in hysterics while Arabella stood there calmly, her face not showing a single expression. “Lucy’s dying.”

Bella shifted her weight, “I told her to stay away from him, but she didn’t listen to me. You know how she is.”

“How did he even meet her? I doubt Dracula frequents night clubs,” he grumbled as he started to pace back and forth on the empty floor of the room Mrs. Westenra used as an office.

“He stole your phone,” Ari sighed. “Lucy called your phone and he answered. Now, he’s been using it to call and text me.” She unlocked her phone and showed Jack the countless text messages she had received from his old number in the past twenty-four hours, “While he was with Lucy, I had called her and he saw my picture on her phone. He had her introduce us so that he could get to me. I’m obviously what he’s after, so I’ve been staying here, trying to figure out a way to kill him before he kills me.”

Jack’s pacing stilled, eyes wide, “You were with him last night, weren’t you?”

She only nodded, rewrapping the towel around her figure to better cover her skin which now felt overly exposed, “He invited me to dinner and I accepted in hopes of finding out how I could kill him. I didn’t expect to end up in where I did.”

Jack scoffed, “Wow, you are a fucking whore, aren’t you?”

She didn’t know what it felt like to be staked through the heart, but she imagined this was what it felt like. This wasn’t like Jack. This was so against character for him to be so crass, so she stared at him with her mouth hung open wide and his cheeks flushed red with anger. She didn’t even think to stop herself when she drew back and her fist made contact with his cheek, her wet hair making a solid slapping sound against her back in time with the cracking sound of her knuckles and his cheekbone with her fist made contact with his face.

Jack reeled back, clutching his already bruising cheekbone as Arabella stalked up to him, her eyes boring into his with the utmost hatred, “You don’t get to call me a whore. I tried my absolute best to help you through Lucy’s engagement. I have done everything in my power to keep your relationship together ever since you confessed your undying love for her and she rejected you. Even after all I’ve done, you call me a whore, but I’d rather be a whore than a pathetic, spineless child with a broken heart because I fell in love with someone who will never want me back like you did, Jack.” She turned on her heels, the whipping of her hair as she turned stinging his bruising face, her knuckles throbbing just a bit, “See yourself out, Jack. I can take care of Lucy on my own.”

“He’ll kill her, Arabella, and he’ll make you into one of his brides,” Jack tried to reason before she slammed the bedroom door in his face. “You can’t do this all on your own.”

She swung the door open quickly, “I don’t need a man telling me what I can and cannot do, especially not you.”


	17. Chapter 17

She spent most of the day taking care of Lucy, feeding her ice chips and wiping the sweat from her face, but all Lucy did was sleep. She insisted that Arabella leave her be, but that wasn’t something Bella had ever been good at, overly compassionate for absolutely every creature on the face of the earth. When Lucy finally fell back asleep after her bath, Ari helped her redress into clean sweatpants and a t-shirt before tucking heavy comforters around her shivering form. Bella set up her laptop on her shins to binge-watch ‘Charmed’ for the millionth time, smiling at the memory of when she was very young, curling up with her mother on the sofa only to demand to watch ‘the witch show’ on TV, so she didn’t complain when Lucy tucked herself against Ari’s side to try and steal the warmth she was putting off.

Episode after episode flickered in front of her face, not even noticing when the sun went down, falling asleep next to Lucy, their foreheads pressed together, but the tug of the blankets away from her cause Lucy to stir awake. Her eyes narrowed as she looked down at Arabella who was sleeping soundly under a thin flat sheet. Bella had always been one to cocoon herself in blankets as she slept, but the tug came from Lucy’s feet. 

She leaned closer to the end of the bed, careful not to disturb Bella, “Is that you?” Lucy expected the vampire to peer up at her with a smirk on his face, but her assumption was wrong.

Her breath hitched in her throat as the decaying toddler from the cemetery last night peeked up from the foot of the bed as he whispered, “Bloofer lady.”

Her heart was pounding in her chest, hand gripping Arabella’s for dear life in an attempt to wake her, but her voice was gone. She couldn’t speak or take her eyes off of the undead child trying to crawl up into her bed to play, the words ‘blooper lady’ becoming a mantra of terror, but the dark figure looming in the window gave her some relief.

Count Dracula stood on her windowsill, staring down at her with a grin on him slightly red-stained lips, “Can I come in?”

Lucy nodded quickly in fear as she backed up closer to Arabella who grumbled something incoherent before rolling to face away from Lucy, tucking the white sheet up under her chin. Dracula stepped down from the sill and made his way to the undead child who took his hand, tutting at the small boy in Victorian dress.

“I thought I warned you about playing with him,” Dracula gave a quiet laugh. He led the small boy to the other side of the room where Arabella’s bag lay abandoned on her bedside table next to her charging cellphone. “I’m assuming she keeps stakes nearby?” Lucy gave a curt and rushed nod as she watched Dracula reach into Bella’s leather backpack and pull out a large wooden stake, “Does she wake easily?”

“Sleeps like the dead,” Lucy shakily muttered.

His smile was surprisingly warm for the beast that he was, freehand cupping Bell’s cheek, tracing her cheekbone with his thumb, “Of course she does. Now, I suggest turning around. I’m about to murder a child.”

Lucy gave him a look of disbelief before ducking down to press her face into Arabella’s back, the shrill cry of the toddler caused her to grab onto Bella and let out a soft whimper. Ari gave a sleepy moan as she pulled the sheet she was wrapped in higher up on her body, face burrowing in her fluffy pillow, “Lucy, rollover. You’re suffocating me.”

A huff of amusement left Dracula’s nostrils as he tugged at the sheet the Van Helsing girl had wrapped herself up in to reveal her tank top and panties she was sleeping in, “She is stunning, isn’t she?”

“You’ve taken a liking to her, hm?” Lucy wondered, her fear subsiding as she scooted away from Arabella who reached out for another blanket to cover her chilled skin. She had no idea who was staring down at her. “You know, she’s started mumbling your name in her sleep. It’s quite cute actually.”

“When did that start?”

Lucy pushed the dark strands of hair off of Arabella’s face, her nose scrunching up at the touch, “After the night at the club. She told me all about how she knows you and how I should stay away from you.”

Dracula picked up Arabella’s limp wrist, playing with her fingers, nails painted crimson, a color that perfectly complemented her fair skin, “And are you afraid of me now?”

“Oh please,” Lucy laughed a little louder than she meant to, “Bella tends to overreact to everything. I blame her father for that one.” A bit on envy washed over Lucy as she watched Dracula lean down a place his lips in Arabella’s exposed collarbone, nose pressing into the artery on her neck, but he didn’t bite down, “I’m sick. I think I might be dying.”

Dracula lifted his head from Arabella’s sweet-scented skin, “Is that so?” He moved to Lucy’s side of the bed, sitting next to her and taking her shoulder in his clawed hand, “You’re mortal, though. You’ve been dying since the day you were born.”

“Look at me. I’m as white as a sheet,” Lucy complained, a smile forming on her lips. “I’m starting to look like Arabella, I’m so pale.”

His eyes left Lucy’s to stare down at the sleeping girl next to her who now cuddled a pillow to her chest, one leg straddling the mass of fluff to give him a nice view of her rear, “She does have a lovely parlor, Lucy. You should feel honored. For centuries, pale skin was seen as a sign of nobility. The rich had pale skin because they did not have to work in the sun.”

“When I asked you if you would ever love me,” Lucy began as she cupped his chin to bring his gaze back to her and away from Arabella’s sleeping body, “you said ‘no’. Is that because you have fallen for Arabella? She’ll never love you back. The poor thing is incapable of such emotions.”

Dracula shook his head, “Blood tells a story, my dear. I have tasted her blood on many occasions and I know how she feels about me even though she doesn’t know it yet. She’ll come around soon enough.”

“It’s not like she’s that beautiful,” Lucy grumbled as jealousy overcame her. “Besides, she’ll never agree to spend eternity with you as I would.” Lucy pressed her mouth to Dracula’s. “What could boring Arabella offer you that I couldn’t?”

Dracula’s eyes flashed red as he stared down at the weak Lucy Westenra in front of him. He attempted to hide his anger at the insults she was throwing at Arabella behind the tight grin on his mouth as he pushed Lucy away, “You’re quite right. You know, my people have a saying: one must always speed the parting guest.”

“What does that mean?”

Dracula bared his fangs with a loud his, latching onto Lucy’s throat, one hand cupping her mouth shut and the other supporting his weight on the bed next to her. He drank his fill of Lucy Westenra, smearing the remnants of her blood off of his lips as he pulled away from her limp body, her eyes staring wide and empty at the mirror behind him. His anger still reigned supreme, but the small moan from his left caught his attention.

Arabella Van Helsing had pulled one of Lucy’s blankets free and around her body. Her nose was tucked firmly under the pink fluff and her green eyes moved under her eyelids in a dream. He could only imagine what it was she dreamt of, but he wanted to know. He was stuffed from draining Lucy of every drop of blood, so he just couldn’t know. Not yet, but the whisper of ‘Dracula’ on her lips made him beam as bright as the sun.

“Arabella Van Helsing, you will be mine.”


	18. Chapter 18

Buzzing around her head was a fat fly that would occasionally land on her nose before she would swat it away, grumbling curses under her breath. No matter how hard she sleepily swatted at the annoying insect, the buzzing persisted. With a groan, Arabella sat up in bed with her head in her hands to protect her sensitive eyes to the sunlight that was shining through the window and across the room, letting a slight breeze make her hair sway around her face.

She nudged at Lucy with an irritating noise escaping her in a scratchy groan, “Lucy, please close the curtains. It’s too bright.” Lucy didn’t respond, but Arabella could feel her sitting up next to her, “Seriously, dude, how many times have I asked you to please close the curtains in the morning?”

Clenched fists rubbed the sleep from her eyes which squinted around the overly lit room. She let out a grunt-like groan as she stretched, eyes clenched as she arched her back and stretched her arms out away from her body.

“That damn fly woke me up,” Bella grunted as she plopped back onto the mattress with her elbows supporting her weight. She turned her head, eye finally adjusted to the light, to face Lucy who stared blankly into the mirror, “Luc, are you okay?” Arabella sat back up, straddling Lucy’s hips as she shook her shoulder, “Stop it, Lucy. This isn’t funny.”

When the fat fly landed on Lucy’s open mouth, Arabella stumbled off the bed, her mouth hung open like a fish. Her breath caught in her throat as her hands came up to cover her mouth. Tears welled in Arabella’s green eyes as she fell to her knees next to Lucy’s side of the bed, screams filling the room, one after another. Her screeches were blood-curdling as Mrs. Westenra barged in, falling next to Arabella’s screaming form.

For several moments, the two women screamed and cried on that spot on the floor until Arabella gained her wits back, standing on shaking legs. Her voice trembled as she placed her hand on Mrs. Westenra’s shoulder, “I’m going to call an ambulance.”

Tears still fell down her cheeks as she made her way down the stairs and called the authorities to tell that to send an ambulance and that Lucy was dead. She could still hear Mrs. Westenra screaming as she sat on the sofa away from her dead friend and Lucy’s mother. She had slipped on shorts clumsily right before the authorities arrived to take Lucy away and a social worker and paramedics calmed Mrs. Westenra.

“Can you tell us what happened?” Mrs. Westenra’s favorite priest, Father Leonard, asked her as she sipped on a cup of too hot and too sweet tea just trying to calm her frazzled nerves. She handed Arabella a tissue, “I know this is shocking, but I need to know all that I can since she died so suddenly.”

Bella used the tissue to dry her tears, “She’s been sick for a couple of days and refused to see any doctors.” She sniffled, more tears falling as she watched the paramedics wheel out Lucy’s sheet-covered corpse on a gurney. “She was so weak. I should have just forced her.”

“This is not your fault, Miss Helsing,” Father Leonard assured and took her hand in his. “I do have one last question that I’d usually ask the nearest family member, but I don’t think her mother is up for it right now. What was Lucy’s end of life plans?”

Arabella sniffled again as her eyes followed the gurney. She swallowed the lump on her throat as she remembered the horrified look on Lucy’s death-frozen face and she knew Dracula was behind this. That’s when her worst fear popped into her mind: Lucy could be a vampire, “She wanted to be cremated. Do you think we could have the service first thing tomorrow? I think it will be easier on her mother if we do this as quickly as possible.”

Father Leonard smiled at Arabella, handing her another tissue, “Of course.”

“Father, I do have a question for you. Maybe you can help me,” Arabella sighed as she shifted in her chair. Her fingers twirled the crucifix around her neck, “I studied to be a nun in America until I turned eighteen, a few months shy of taking my final vows. I was wondering if it would be too late to take them and join the convent associated with your church. Lucy’s death has reminded me that I made a mistake not following my calling.”

“I think you should take a few more months before taking your vows, Arabella,” Father Leonard smiled as he noticed the crucifix around her neck which he recognized as her great aunt’s from their previous conversations after Sunday mass. “I did some research on your ancestor. She was a well-liked woman and very intelligent. I believe she would be proud of you regardless of if you decide to take your vows or not. However, I’m sure she would want you to be sure of your decision considering you’ve come back to this realization after Lucy’s sudden death.” He squeezed her trembling hand, “You need to be completely sure. Why don’t we talk again after Lucy’s service tomorrow?”

Arabella dressed and took Lucy’s car to the hospital after the paramedics had left and Mrs. Westenra had calmed down enough to insist that Bella go visit her dying mother. When Bella opened the door to Zoe’s room, she wasn’t surprised to see Jack there, sitting next to her mother and talking about Dracula. Now was as good a time as any to tell him, she supposed. 

“Jack tells me you’ve been seeing Dracula,” Zoe said without a single emotion on her face or voice.

Arabella sat on the end of Zoe’s bed, handing Jack her bag, “Mom, it’s not what you think. I was trying to find his weakness because he needs to be stopped. Lucy has…”

“I already told her about Lucy,” Jack growled and pushed Bella’s bag into the floor. “I already told her how you didn’t keep Lucy from Dracula and now she’s sick.”

“She’s dead, Jack,” Bella tossed the saying over her shoulder like it was nothing, the only emotion that bled from her words was the tear that fell down her cheek. “He killed her and I was right there, asleep the whole time. I failed. I didn’t save her because I was too worried about you and how you think I’m a whore.”

“Arabella…”

“I have been trying to figure out how to stop him. He wanted me to be his bride and I rejected him because I want him dead and he took it out on Lucy,” Arabella yelled as tears flowed down her cheeks along with mascara. “I tried so hard. He’s obsessed with me. He wanted me. When I rejected him, he killed her.”

Zoe grabbed Arabella’s wrist, stopping her from pacing a rut into the floor, “Then you’ll have to start over. We’ll go over Agatha’s notes together.” Zoe’s accent shifted as she pulled Arabella to sit down in front of her, “We’ll figure this out.”


	19. Chapter 19

“Do you want to talk about it?” Zoe asked Arabella who was pacing around the room with her fingers in her mouth as she bit her nails down to the quick. She didn’t even flinch as the nerve endings screamed and her fingers bled. “Arabella Van Helsing, stop pacing for God’s sake. You’re making me nervous.”

The padding of her socked feet ceased as she stared at the window, her fingers still in her mouth, teeth gnawing at fingernails and cuticles. She could taste the metallic tang of her blood on her tongue. After Jack had left in tears, she had collapsed into Zoe’s bed and cried into her shoulder. Now, her eyes were red and puffy as she stared out at the sunset with a throbbing headache. She couldn’t decide if it would be worse if Lucy was just dead or if she was going to become a vampire. There was no real way of telling. Dracula had said that most people he bit just died, but wouldn’t that just be worse? She didn’t know.

“Her funeral is tomorrow morning, so I’ll have to leave early,” Ari whispered as she finally took her fingers out of her mouth, unable to stomach the taste of her blood anymore. “Can I stop by the apartment and grab one of my dresses? I don’t think one of Lucy’s dresses would be very appropriate for church.” Zoe nodded as she watched Bella wipe another tear off of her cheek. “Mrs. Westenra wants me to decide what Lucy wears too. I’m thinking that sparkly rose-gold one that she loved. What do you think?”

“I think that would be wonderful.”

Arabella sat down on the end of the bed, running her fingers through her tangled hair that she didn’t even bother to brush, “She’s going to be cremated. I figured that would end any chance of her coming back.”

Zoe took hold of Arabella’s bleeding digits and kissed the tops of her hands, “This is exactly why I didn’t want you getting mixed up with Dracula after he left the foundation. You’re too young to be taking all of this on by yourself.”

“Mom,” Arabella sighed, “he wants me. Who else is going to help me? No one else can help me.”

“That’s not true,” Zoe’s voice was attempting to be soothing, but the pain that bled into it made Arabella flinch. “I can help you.”

Bella stood from her spot on Zoe’s hospital bed, shaking her head, “You’re dying, mom.”

The next morning, Jack stood in the back pew of the tiny church Lucy’s service was being held at. He didn’t cry today but watched as the priest spoke about Lucy. He went on about her love for God even though Lucy wasn’t a believer and her love for knowledge even though Lucy hated learning. It sounded more like a eulogy that would be fit more for Arabella rather than Lucy. Where was Arabella?

A small and shaking hand slipped into his own, a small ‘hey’ whispered into his ear as Arabella laid her head on Jack’s shoulder, her dark hair draping over his shoulder and down his back. Jack stared down at her, mascara streaks down her cheeks. His thumb smoothed over her made-up features, black flakes sticking to his fingers. Jack had to admit he almost didn’t recognize her when she pressed herself up against him, wearing a dress that fell below her knees and small heels that might as well have been flat. Her hair fell in her natural waves that almost looked too messy and she only wore mascara and blush on her face. This wasn’t the Lucy-created Arabella Van Helsing. This was the real Arabella who loved God and was afraid of her father and loved her mother, not the girl who went out and got drunk every night and danced with random men. This was not an independent party woman. This was a child who clung to Jack. The twenty-one year old on his arm looked barely fifteen. 

“I talked her mother into having her cremated,” Bella choked out over the sobs she was trying to conceal in her throat. Mrs. Westenra was crying enough for everyone in the room. “Maybe it will prevent her from rising again.”

Jack tightened his grip on Arabella, kissing the top of her head in an attempt to soothe the sadness welling inside of her small form. He could only imagine all of the emotions that were plaguing his best friend who just lost Lucy and whose mother was probably going to be dead by the end of the week. Of course Zoe’s condition hurt him too, but Jack knew it was starting to take a toll on the girl who was holding back tears. Zoe was Arabella’s only decent parent and the two of them had just started to rekindle a shattered mother-daughter relationship. 

“Quincey is leaving, going back to America,” Jack whispered.

Bella stroked his fingers that were intertwined with hers with her thumb, “He picked up the ring he gave her this morning.”

“She hasn’t even been dead twenty-four hours,” Jack nearly growled, but Arabella’s soft squeeze of his hand brought him back down to earth. “He didn’t deserve her.”

“And she didn’t deserve you.”


	20. Chapter 20

Arabella Van Helsing looked completely out of place as she walked through the lobby of the apartment building which she knew housed some of the wealthiest people in the city. She wasn’t perfectly made up like these other young women who she was sure could only afford to live in this building thanks to an older gentleman. She looked so ordinary compared to the beautiful and tall blonde girls with impeccable features. She wasn’t much to look at compared to these other girls, none of them bothering to even look at her in the elevator up to the top floor, but her focus wasn’t to be like these girls.

The buzzing of the doorbell was loud in her ears as she waited impatiently at the metal door which swung open to reveal the man she had come to see, tall and dark and so well dressed. The vampire flashed his fangs at her in a smile, “Arabella, I almost didn’t recognize you, but I’d know your scent anywhere.”

“Spare me the pleasantries, Count Dracula,” Arabella huffed as she squeezed past the undead to study the penthouse he had taken to inhabiting that had insanely high ceilings with a minimalistic, yet gothic elegance, sculptures of tortured souls acting as a decoration. “You killed Lucy. Have you no control? She willingly let you feed off of her, yet you still killed her. Why?”

Dracula couldn’t hide the amused grin on his face as he watched Arabella sit down at the long marble table in the center of the room like she owned the place. Her scowl was beautiful on her bare face, lips naturally red and pursed as she stared him down from her spot at the head of the table, his normal seat. He admired how she looked, reminding him of Agatha in every way with her messy brown locks and bare face, but Arabella had a flush to her cheeks that Agatha didn’t, the youthful blush of a girl full of life, delicious.

Dracula rested his weight on the table in front of where Ari sat, keeping his superior height over her, “I quite like you like this. Your natural beauty is stunning. What made you change your look?”

“I’m not here for your approval on my appearance,” she grumbled as she crossed her legs, feeling the heat radiating through the curtains of the large picture window behind her. The sun completely blocked out, but its heat still warmed her skin, “Why did you kill Lucy?”

Dracula ran his fingers through the lengths of her hair and over her cheek. His clawed thumb parted her lips to admire the way his touch sent her heart racing, “You’re an intelligent young woman, Arabella. You know why. Besides, are you even sure she’s dead?”

She flicked her wrist to the side to check the time, 2:37 pm, surely the process of cremation on Lucy’s body had started already, “Quite sure. So, you killed her because I wouldn’t become your bride? From Agatha’s writings about Jonathan Harker and what you did to her, permission isn’t something you usually as for.”

“Lucy did teach me one thing,” the vampire smiled as he cupped Bella’s chin to angle it away from him, eyeing the length of her throat, noting the silver chain he knew harbored that offensive cross of hers, “consent is a delicacy and it is highly addictive.” His knuckles traced over the artery in her neck, “I have always wanted to reproduce as well. Perhaps a bride who gives her consent is the key I’ve been missing for centuries.”

“Reproduce? Like, have children?” 

“Precisely,” Dracula beamed at the young girl before him.

Arabella stood from her seat, finally taller than the vampire who remained seated on the marble table. She leaned into Dracula, “If you think I would ever agree to have a child with you, you’re very mistaken.”

A small hum left Dracula’s mouth, a smile on his lips. His large hands wrapped themselves around Arabella’s hips to pull her closer to him. The tip of his nose was pressed to hers, “You can’t resist me, Arabella. You may not realize it, but you’re infatuated with me just like Agatha was, maybe more. You read her writings. You’ve done your research on my trip to England through the stories of the few survivors. You read Mina Murray’s diaries and you know what I did to Jonathan Harker, but you can’t stop thinking about me. You dream about me. You kept saying my name in your sleep that night I came to see Lucy. She said you do it every night. I can taste your thoughts of me on your blood and I tasted it that night at the club when I kissed you. You’re in love with me, but you just don’t see it yet.”

“How can a monster know what love is?” Ari whispered with a cracked voice. “I hate you.”

Dracula pressed his mouth to Arabella’s plump and trembling lips, the two melting into each other. He took fistfuls of her hair, yanking her head back to trail tongue and teeth down the delicate flesh. He didn’t bite down, but she did, teeth sinking into his free hand that held her chin still. The huff he gave was tainted with lust and amusement as he studied the sight of her canines indenting into undead flesh. He used a thumb and forefinger to loosen the hinge of her jaw to make her release his hand which moved to wrap fingers around the column of her neck.

“I believe that I am in love with you, Arabella Van Helsing,” Dracula sighed before scooping the girl up into his arms. “I will make you my bride even if it’s the last thing I do. You are the perfect culmination of the two individuals who would have made the finest brides I could have ever asked for. You are my best find, the ultimate trophy.”

“I am no one’s trophy,” she spat, legs tightening around his waist as he carried her to his bedroom. The slam of her back against the door put a hole in the wall. Her lips smashed against his, the two collide in a mess of teeth and saliva, “You disgust me.”

He laid her down on the bed as he had done a few nights ago, the two falling together with her legs wrapping tighter around him as the bounced on the mattress, “I am in love with you.”

As he hovered over her he stroked her cheek. Behind her green eyes which raged with lust and hate was a sadness he knew was coming from all of the loss she was having to grieve. He stopped her hands as the worked the buttons of his shirt open. This couldn’t happen, not like this anyways. Taking advantage of his meals was something he didn’t mind doing, but he couldn’t do it to someone like her. She wasn’t his meal.

Her hands struggled against him as she tried to stop the sadness inside her with a reckless romp with a man who could kill her in mere seconds, “This isn’t right.”

“What are you talking about?” Arabella half screeched when he pinned her hands above her head. “There’s no way in hell you’re against premarital sex.”

Dracula unwrapped Arabella’s legs from his waist to pin her into a tight embrace, rolling the two of them onto their sides. He cradled her head against his neck like she was a child, “I can tell that this isn’t you. You don’t want to do this, not this way. This is what Lucy turned you into, fixing what’s broken with sex.”

“You don’t know me like you think you do,” she sighed as she attempted to wiggle away from him only to be pulled tighter to him.”


	21. Chapter 21

Dracula wasn’t exactly sure when Arabella had dozed off, but perhaps it came after her tears ceased staining her cheeks as he held her sobbing form. She lay asleep in his bed now with her lips slightly parted and her breathing steady. Her brown locks fanned out across the pillows like her Lord’s thorny crown and that thought made him grin. She looked saint-like in her modest black dress that fell to her shins, the neckline sitting at the base of her throat which he dared not touch. The silver chain which connected to Agatha’s dainty cross peaked out over the cut of the fabric. He wanted to adjust it for her and place it where it could be seen, but he had no intention of moving from his spot next to her.

Dracula was caught in his daydream which didn’t even let him acknowledge the fact that the sun had set for the night until she was distracted by the incessant ringing from his laptop that Renfield had provided. Surely the man was trying to ‘skype’ him.

“Master,” Renfield greeted through the camera, “I think you’ll be happy to know that Ms. Westenra has risen. I checked with the funeral home about an hour ago and they said her body has gone missing. I’m assuming she will be there shortly.”

Dracula glanced back towards the door to his bedroom, the sleeping figure of Arabella Van Helsing burned into his mind’s eye, “Any news on if she’s fed or not?”

“Well, I did hear some panic in the background of the call,” Frank said meekly. “It seems one of the workers was found with his throat torn out. On a brighter note, I have a fresh supply of blood stocked in your refrigerator. It should be decent for the girl.”

When the buzzer rang, Dracula found himself flinching at the sudden noise, head instinctively whipping around to see if the sleeping Van Helsing girl had emerged from his bedroom, but she hadn’t. She sleeps like the dead, he remembered with a small smile before answering the door, half expecting to find Lucy Westenra there, but Zoe Van Helsing and Jack Seward glared up at him.

“You don’t look very surprised,” Zoe Helsing huffed as she squeezed passed the vampire and into his flat which was much bigger than she had expected, much airier. 

“And you don’t look very dead,” he countered with a gruff tone. He could only imagine the look on the doctor’s face when she saw her daughter come out of his bedroom. “What can I help you two with? I’m in the middle of entertaining a guest.”

“Would that ‘guest’ happen to be my child?” Zoe gave a huff as she hauled Arabella’s leather bag off of one of the leather chairs around Dracula’s table.

The vampire gave an amused sigh, taking the bag from Zoe who seemed as though she could barely stand the weight of the bag which rattled with the sound of wooden stakes inside, “I always believed mother’s intuition was a myth. Well, Zoe, I suppose the ‘mother of the year’ award goes to you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Zoe shot back, holding up her cell phone. “I’ve had Life 360 on her phone for months. Just so you know, it’s an app that tracks her location.”

“Don’t trust your kid?” Dracula challenged as he braced his hands on the table as he challenged Dr. Helsing across the table, her mirroring his posture.

“Not for a second,” Zoe reiterated. “Where is she?”

The vampire watched Dr. Seward investigate the sitting room, picking up her shoes that were discarded under the table. She had small feet, but she was also small, so her shoes were no different. 

“Did you change her?” The young doctor asked in horror, his eyes turning glassy as he wagged the decanter of blood for Zoe to see.

The vampire rolled his eyes with a smirk on his lips before seizing the doctor by the neck, staring down at the shivering man-boy, “Do you think I could have done that with that insipid crucifix around her throat? Please, Dr. Seward, you give me too much credit.”

“Who are you expecting, then?” Zoe interjected. “Surely not Lucy Westenra. She’s been cremated at the insistence of my daughter. Thank God she got the Van Helsing wit. Perhaps that’s why you’re so obsessed with her.”

“Flavor, not an obsession,” a small voice called from the other side of the room.  
Arabella stood against the wall. Her hair was mused from sleeping against Dracula’s pillows which knotted her long hair. Her eyes were puffy with dark bags underneath, red cheeks highlighting her look of mourning. For Dracula, it was like the room lit up when Arabella walked into the room with her arms crossed and a soft expression full of sleep on her face.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! Please comment to keep me motivated.

"Thank God you're okay," Zoe sighed with relief, using what little bit of strength she had left to cocoon Arabella in a tight squeeze.

Bella feigned a small smile, but her eyes hid her confusion, "What are you doing here?"

"Saving your ass," Jack remarked as he made his way to his friend.

Ari cocked her head to the side as Dracula moved across the room without taking his eyes off of her. That was when she noticed the decanters filed with a sticky, crimson liquid. Two glasses sat to the decanters' left on a silver platter and her eyes went wide before locking onto the eyes of the beast who seemed to be stalking her from across the room. Her hands instinctively went to feel her own throat, searching for the ragged edges of a bite mark similar to the one that had adorned Lucy's neck, but she found none. The only scar on her flesh was from the needle she sliced hr wrist open with to bait Dracula into attacking her back at the foundation what seemed like an eternity ago.

His smirk was too cocky, eyes challenging her to figure out the next part of this game. His knight was menacing her queen. She did not feel any different from the heavy grief riddling her body before she had come to Dracula's flat. She felt completely normal if not better than that. He hadn't bitten her. Jack's cheeks were flushed red, so it wasn't him; and it couldn't be her mother. Her weakened state would not have allowed her to survive one of Dracula's feedings. Lucy.

Ari pushed her mother way and put herself between Zoe, Jack, and Dracula, "You son of a bitch!" Without the slightest hesitation, she pulled a stake fro her bag and lunged at the vampire, but he stopped her, pinning her back against the side of the table. His superior height allowed him a great advantage, but Arabella Van Helsing was never one to give up a fight. It wasn't until he ripped the stake from her palm, leaving behind trails of her own blood down her palms did Arabella stop fighting, "I had her cremated. How did you save her? It was broad daylight when they put her in the furnace. I witnessed it myself."

"Agatha also misinterpreted the resilience of the vampire. I was hoping you wouldn't have made the same mistake," the vampire cooed in her ear, his nose brushing against the hallow of her cheek. As the bell rang, he pressed his cheek to hers, directing their gazes towards the front door, "That should be our friend now."

He relinquished his hold on the petite girl who stumbled back into the table, pressing her bleeding palm to her lips in hopes her saliva would kick-start the clotting process. Lucy would be starving and the last thing she needed was to be attacked, leaving her mother unprotected. Sure, Jack could be a capable protector, but Dracula was sneaky. No one knew him like Agatha did, but Arabella was the next best thing

With a snap of his fingers, Dracula turned to Jack, "Dr. Seward, you love the girl, yes? I strongly recommend that you keep in mind beauty is only skin deep."

The words that followed were not the words of her dying mother, but the words of a different woman coming from Zoe's moth in a holland accent, "Braveheart, Jack, remember it is the soul that one loves, not the aspect."

Bella's and Dracula's heads whipped around in unison as their eyes laid upon Zoe who sat at the table, looking as weak as she ever had, but her accent returned to normal as she claimed she was perfectly fine when the vampire asked. Ari didn't believe it for a second as she moved to stand protectively at her mother's side, taking her hand in a tight grip. Zoe's fingers were cold between her own.

"Did you have trouble finding the place?" Dracula smiled as he opened the door and stood aside for the charred remains of Lucy Westenra to walk in.

"I can always sniff you out, babe."

Lucy pulled herself against Dracula using the collar of his shirt to kiss him and Arabella couldn't decipher if her gasp of disgust had to do with the kiss she gave the older vampire or if it was directed towards Lucy's appearance, standing naked before them with pieces of her flesh nearly melting off her body. She was charred and disfigured, once beautiful face swollen and dripping with god-knows-what liquids. The smell of her was a mix of burnt hair and that sickly-sweet smell of rotting flesh. Had Arabella not heard Lucy's voice, she would have doubted it was even Lucy. It looked nothing like her.

Bella felt as if she were going to vomit, the sudden urge taking over all of her senses. She couldn't take her eyes off of Lucy, but she finally came back to herself as Lucy tried to force a kiss from jack who was the same shade of green Arabella surely was.

"Bella," Lucy sighed, "how many times have I told you that you look awful without any makeup on? Honestly, you look like you've been hit by a truck."

Ari swallowed the thick spit in an attempt to hold herself together, "It's been a rough couple of days."

"I'm sure it has been," Lucy giggled before kissing Dracula another time or two. "I dont blame you, of course. You lost me, but now I'm back. You don't look as bad as your mother at least."

"If you're so beautiful, Lucy," Zoe asked as she made her way to Lucy's side with Bella' phone in hand, "why don't you take a selfie"

Bella covered her mouth with her bloodied hand as she watched the scene unfold in front of her when Lucy finally saw her real reflection, realizing her beauty had been replaced by charred flesh.

Lucy's cries made Ari's heart wrench as she felt Zoe move back to her side and wrap her up in an embrace to hide her face and cover her ears, but the sound of Dracula trying to soothe Lucy was just as painful to her as Lucy's screams as his words seemed to solidify the truth that Lucy always recited to Bella: "I'm much better than you in every way, you know. Any man you want, I could take from you. I can promise you that." So, Bella broke free from Zoe's embrace, her own blood staining her lips from where she tried to hold back the churning in her stomach

Smelling Arabella's blood was what caused Lucy to snap out of her moment of self-pity, eyes flashing red and fangs reveal themselves as she had been from Dracula on an occasion or so. Lucy was on her in a second, shoving Zoe out of the way without any real effort. All Bella could do was scream as she felt Lucy's teeth dig into her flesh. This was not the opiate fantasy Agatha had described in her writings. This felt like fire running through her veins and burning her from the inside-out. She passed out from the pain just after Lucy was wrenched from her neck, Lucy's own scream melding with Arabella's as it echoed around the two girls before ash fell over Bella's writhing frame.


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has a single mention of IVs, excessive blood, and a hospital stay. Please avoid if triggering.

Zoe was kneeling beside her daughter, her hands clamped around Arabella's throat to stop the blood from gushing absolutely everywhere. Her hands and clothes were covered in her child's blood and it seemed as if it would never stop. The vampire behind her was no help, holding himself back. Dracula was too tempted to pick up where Lucy had left off. It would be so easy to drain Bella now and she would taste so good, but this was no time to think about his own thirst. Based on the information he learned from drinking the blood of Zoe and Arabella Van Helsing, he knew only someone with the same blood type as her could donate blood to the girl to save her life if such a thing was even possible, but her type was so rare. 

Zoe was babbling things under her breath, medical jargon no-one in the room understood besides Jack Seward who was ripping up his sports coat with his hands to act as a tourniquet for his friend's wounds. Dracula could barely comprehend the words being yelled by the young doctor, "Call an ambulance! She's going to die if you don't!"

"Zoe," Dracula managed his words through clenched teeth, "she is not going to make it to a hospital. If you do not want her to die right here, you have to let me take care of this."

Zoe whipped her head around to stare up at the vampire, "And let you turn her into a vampire? I don't think so."

"Do you want your child to die or not?" Dracula questioned as he kneeled beside the girl's mother, replacing her hands with his own around Ari's throat.

It was then that Zoe seemed to go into shock as she could not take her eyes away from her blood-soaked hands. She started to cry as Arabella's jaw went slack and blood slipped out of the corner of her mouth, so she tore the silver cross away from Bella's neck, "Just do what you need to do."

His lips covered the gaping wound on Ari's neck, lapping at it in an attempt to keep his frenzy in check. He pulled away when it was becoming too much. The mix of his 'bite' seemed to allow her blood to clot and the extensive bleeding slowed along with her heart rate and blood pressure. She was relaxing.

"What did you do?" Zoe could barely whisper, running her fingers though Arabella's hair.

Dracula smiled at the dying woman, but his smile was that of a predator even though he meant it to be sincere, "Remember when I bit you and made you dream?"

"Yeah..."

"I did that," the vampire mused. "You better take her to a hospital and get her taken care of if you do not want her to die."

"The Harker Foundation would probably be best."

Weeks passed before Arabella actually regained consciousness, never even realizing she had been taken to the Harker foundation to ensure she had not become a vampire and then moved to the hospital when it was discovered that she was still human. When she woke up under florescent lights, she had assumed she had died and the burning in her veins made her believe she was in hell. Everything that had happened in the past few months had felt like a fever dream with vampires, her dying mother, and resurrect corpses. The hands engulfing her own was what brought her back to reality. She blinked a few times before staring up at the man beside her with his dark eyes locked on the tubes connected to her arm with a simple needle and medical tape. She immediately recognized the man as the vampire who had come into her life like a hurricane, turning it upside down and inside out, but she felt to calm with his hand holding hers that she did not feel the need to pull away. She tried to allow herself to fall back asleep before realizing the sun was shining in through the windows and right onto him. He didn't burn and did not feel any pain.

"How?" Ari grumbled as she scooted into a sitting position.

She rubbed her eyes with her free hand as she looked around the room for signs of her mother, but she saw none. 

"Agatha showed me that the legends of the vampire were all fiction. I had believed them for so long, but she showed me the truth," Dracula tried to keep his voice soothing as he combed his fingers through her long hair as he had done so many times since he first came to see her in the hospital.

Bella shook her head, "That's not possible. Agatha has been dead for over 100 years."

The vampire leaned down and kissed Arabella's lips and she kissed him back until he pulled away from her, "You've missed a lot in these past few weeks, Bella, my love."

"Where's my mother?" Bella questioned in a panic.

The beeping of the machine she was connected to began to beep faster until Dracula hushed her with a hand in her hair, "You just woke up and you need your rest. Go back to sleep."

"Not until you tell me where my mother is," Bella demanded.

Dracula didn't even have time to finish his story and explain how Agatha Van Helsing fit into all of this before the girl was in tears before him. She was rolled away from him and pulled away every time he tried to touch her. She kept repeating the words 'no' and 'get away from me', but he knew better than to listen to her. This is how she got when she was upset and he knew that from the Zoe's blood which still flowed through his veins. He couldn't leave her now because now is when she needed him, so he kept running his fingers through her hair as she sobbed. 

"You said you love me and then you kill my mother!" Bella cried out. "How could you do this to me?"

Dracula just kept quiet and allowed her to ware herself out. Once her tantrum was finished he climbed into bed with her to hold her close to his body. She was too tired to fight back, so she gave in. He was much stronger than her anyways. There was no point in trying, "She was in a lot of pain. I put her out of her misery." He took her chin in his fingers, "I was supposed to die with her. The blood of the dying is poison to the vampire, but I survived by some wicked twist of fate. So, I plan on devoting the rest of my existence to you, Arabella Van Helsing. You have my full loyalty. I'm in love with you."


	24. Chapter 24

A few months had passed from the time she had finally awoken from the mild coma the Jonathan Harker Foundation had put her under to insure she had not been transformed into a vampire. In that time, she had checked herself out of the hospital and sub-letted Zoe's old apartment. She had been staying with the vampire throughout her recovery because she couldn't stand living in Zoe's old flat, to be surrounded by her mother's clothes and pictures seemed like torture. She had tried for the first week after leaving the hospital, sleeping in Zoe's bed and wearing her sweaters in an attempt to feel close to her, but it had become too much to bare. That was when Dracula had insisted on her moving in with him. He had been sneaking into Zoe's flat at night to make sure Arabella was alright and he had to comfort her on the countless occasions of which she had woken up from a nightmare with tears down her face as she called out for Zoe.

Bella stared out the picture window in Dracula's dining room with a silver spoon in her hand. She tapped the metal against the marble table as she watched a plane fly across the sky, the sunlight glinting off of the spoon in her hand and shining in her green eyes. She swallowed the large mouthful of tomato soup when Dracula had emerged from the study to stand with his back to her to face out the window. He often spent his time staring out at the sun and Arabella had to admit she enjoyed the way he looked better than she enjoyed the view of the city below. He always had the smallest smile on his lips when he stared out at the sun and the light made his dark hair and eyes shine in a way she had never seen before. Besides, the penthouse he bought for himself looked much larger in the light than it had during her times with the count before he had learned that the sun could not hurt him. 

The light warmed her skin and her cheeks were rosy beneath the blaring light of the sun. Perhaps the warmth coming through the window was a bit too much for the sweatshirt and fleece-lined leggings she was wearing. her dark hair fell around her face which was bare of any cosmetics. Dracula's eyes met hers with again before returning his gaze to the sun. He had taken her small hand in his. His thumb stroked the inside her palm.

"If you keep staring at the sun like that, you'll go blind," Ari whispered. Their eyes met as the exchanged a small laugh.

The vampire released her hand and guided her back to the table where her dinner still sat next to an interesting item which she called 'grilled cheese' which she pronounced as 'girled cheese'. He found in amusing and often poked fun at her for it. Her years in America with her father gave her the slightest southern draw which he found endearing. It made her different from everyone else in England. It made her stand out and made her special. He always liked an interesting flavor and she was surly that.

He placed her spoon back into her hand and instructed her to finish eating, "I do not see how you can eat the same thing over and over again. How do you not get tired of the same dull flavors day-in and day-out?"

"It's the only thing I know how to make," she giggled, but her smile fell just as quickly as it arose when her eyes landed on the dark stain in the white grout of the black marble-tiled floor, her own blood. "I thought you were going to have that part of the flooring replaced," she shoved her half-eaten grilled cheese and bowl of soup away. She could tell by the way his shoulders tensed that she had suggested too much. He adored the black marble on the floor and the way it matched with the black interior of the rest of the apartment. She let out a heavy breath, "I'm sorry, but it reminds me of everything. I appreciate you replacing the table..." When she had moved in with him, she had asked where her mother died and that was when he told her that Zoe had died on the table-top. Bella had avoided the dining room for weeks when she found out until Dracula had it replaced. She wouldn't leave his bedroom until he did.

He sat himself on the table before her, cupping her chin and rubbing her pulse point with his middle finger, "I'll have someone sent out and it will be done by the weekend." Her smile was enough of a 'thank you'. 

Dracula still held Arabella's chin in his hands, staring down at his bedmate with the utmost love in his eyes, but she was still nothing more than his bedmate who kept to her side of the mattress and who only clung to him at night when she had become too warm in her sleep. She grinned up at him. During her time with him, he had become more and more infatuated with the girl. With every witty remark that left her mouth she reminded him of Agatha. However, what made him fall for her even more was how she was different from Agatha as she tried to help him refrain killing by drawing her own blood for him. She wanted him to be better, but she didn't try to curve his appetite. He would still falter, but she couldn't provide all of his meals and he couldn't drink from her for fear she'd go back to the same girl who locked herself in the bathroom for a whole week and never ate while in her depressive state. He enjoyed her smile more than he enjoyed her taste.

She finally pulled away from his touch, "I was rereading Mina Murray's diary.What you did at the convent was ghastly. Don't even get me started on what happened aboard the Demeter."

"I was different then. Somehow, Arabella Van Helsing," Dracula kneeled beside Arabella to twirl some of her Jair around his index finger, "you've managed to domesticate me. I don't know how you did it, but you did." Her hum was enough to raise his suspicions. "I cannot change the past."

His words were defensive and he moved from her to assert his distaste for the topic. her touch, though, loosened his tense shoulders, "I'm not judging you. I know you're different now. If you weren't, I'd be dead." Her fingers traced the hem of his t-shirt sleeve and down his arm to clasp onto his wrist. Her red black-painted nails stood out against his pale skin, but hers was just as white. "I'm just curious, more so about the Demeter than St. Mary's Convent, as to how you did it. The surviving crew was illiterate and could not write their story. It was told and then written, but information gets lost in translation and the story ends after the crew fled. What happened?"

"Agatha had tried to prevent the 'contagion', as she called it, from spreading to England by blowing up the ship," Dracula gave a chuckle. "She failed of course."

"And so it seems have I," Arabella sighed. She used her grip on his wrist to pull her body from the table. Bella ran her hands over the cotton of his t-shirt, fingertips running feather-light over the scar on his neck which surly matched her own before he seized her hand, "I've failed so miserably."

Dracula's grasp on her wrist allowed him to yank Bella closer to himself, "And how have you failed? You've gained my trust. You could easily turn on me, take me out as Agatha had intended."

"No," her hair swayed around her as she shook her head, "I couldn't turn on you despite the fact that you are the reason I am where I am right now with my best friend and mother dead by your hand."

"Why is that?"

"You've tasted my blood on countless occasions recently, Dracula," Bella sighed against his lips as he brushed her hair away from her face. "You know what I'm about to say."

His lips were close enough to hers now that as he spoke they brushed against hers, "Say it."

"I have fallen in love with you."


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment!!!

Arabella was not too thrilled when she realized that solidifying her relationship with Count Dracula meant she had to cut all ties with the Jonathan Harker Foundation, but she did it to be with him because she just couldn't tell him 'no'. Besides, it was not like she would need the money. Dracula took care of her. His investments took care of him and his lifestyle, so when she insisted she teach him about the great wars he missed during his hibernation, he disked her away across the English Channel and into Germany after Bella had taught him everything Britain had survived during the blitzkrieg attacks on London and other major cities. They toured the ruins in England before taking on Berlin and the Bavarian alps. Dracula seemed a little too fascinated with the ruins of Hitler's mountain retreat and insisted he and Arabella spend a few nights in Berchtesgaden before heading further east. He wanted to show her Romania. The two spent a week in Vienna, seeking the grand museums and cathedrals which Dracula could finally enter and be able to properly enjoy their beauty. However, none of them compared to Notre Dame in Arabella's mind. She hated that Dracula had missed such a beautiful place now turned to ashy rubble. She made sure they visited the site before they departed Paris to make their was to Germany. 

Dracula was more interested in the wars which had taken place and not the cathedrals and art museums Arabella insisted they visit along the way. Being a warlord himself, he found the modern wars so exciting, especially World War Two. He wanted to visit Pearl Harbor after they had seen all of Europe and Russia. There was one stop, however, he insisted Arabella go to with him while they traveled from Austria to Romania. He wanted to take her to Budapest. He wanted to take her to St. Mary's Convent where he had met Agatha. Since Zoe's death, Arabella had been asking a lot of questions about her let third-great aunt that Dracula just couldn't answer properly. He hadn't tased Agatha's blood in almost 125 years. He couldn't recall much about her anymore especially since all of his senses were just too focused on Arabella. 

He had surprised her with the trip, their car pulling right up to the ancient-looking convent which Dracula had to admit looked slightly different than he had remembered it, probably from bombings between 1914 and 1945, from the outside at least, but the front gates were identical. He could almost see Agatha standing there, teasing him with her blood that ran down her fingers much like Arabella had done while he was still locked away at the Jonathan Harker Foundation. Sometimes he forgot how similar the two women were, so he held Bella's hand in his as tightly as he could without hurting her when he noticed her shoulders tense when she realized where they were.

"Vlad," she whispered, "I'm not dressed properly for this."

Dracula cocked his head to the side. She wasn't wearing anything too revealing. Her romper was spaghetti strapped, navy blue with matching lace. The shorts covered a decent portion of her upper thighs, enough to be appropriate at least, and the open 'skirt' portion covered any part of her rear that could possibly be revealed. Her raven hair was braided neatly down her back like he liked it, giving him a stunning views of her ivory neck. Perhaps her heels were too high, but her preferred her in flat shoes anyways. He believed she was too clumsy. She had fallen and scrapped her knees too many time to count since they had made their relationship official three months ago. She had scars there and he would always have to control himself when she started bleeding after a particularly nasty collision with concrete.

Dracula nudged her as their car pulled up to the gates where a nun stood waiting for them with a friendly smile on her face, "I arranged a private tour for you. I told the woman I spoke to about your kinship with Agatha and they were more than happy to meet with you." Her eyes darted back and forth between his, but she couldn't think of any words to say. The thoughts that kept running through her mind were what they would say about what Dracula did at the convent. It wasn't like they would know the man she would be clinging to was the beast himself, but she knew, "I also made a very sizable donation to the lovely women here, so you should really put a brave face on and get out of the car, Miss Helsing. They will not judge you based on your attire."

"You're lucky I don't stake you right here," Bella warned with a pointed finger at her lover before exiting the car and turning her attention to the nun at the gate. Bella's expression changed from furious to charming in a second which took Dracula by surprise as he let out a small grunt of amusement. Bella ignored his 'Darling, you wound me' as she extended her hand out to the nun, "Hi, it's very nice to meet you."

The nun shook her hand, "Mister and Misses Balaur, it's very nice to meet the two of you. Welcome to St. Mary's. I'm Sister Lucille." The nun released Bella's hand to greet Dracula who mentally noted that the habit she wore was almost identical to the one Agatha had worn, "Mrs. Balaur, I believe it is you who is related to one of our former sisters."

"Please," Bella insisted as she cut her eyes as the vampire beside her for introducing them as a married couple and under the name Balaur too which she had remembered was the name he had Agatha put under when he had her loaded onto the Demeter, "call me Arabella or Bella if you prefer, Sister. I'm very excited to lear about my aunt's life here."

"Well, I have been designated St. Mary's historian and what a history this convent has," Sister Lucille grinned at Arabella, eyes being sure not to land on Dracula. She had an uneasy feeling about him, "As I'm sure you know, Arabella, your aunt was quite learned and very interested in the occult. Your husband told Mother Superior on the phone that you are actually in possession of her original writings. I was also told that your second great grandfather actually sought refuge here in the late 1890s, a Mister Jonathan Harker."

Bella could only smile and nod, her fingernails digging into Dracula's hand, wishing she was bale to cause him some sort of pain, "That's what I've been told at least."

"Based on our records, he domiciled here for a few weeks before our tragedy. Come, let me show you to the memorial," Sister Lucille grinned and waved for Dracula and Arabella to follow her down a corridor and into a lower part of the convent filled with old, wooden pews bloodstained, the cobblestone floors stained with the blood of those who died there as well.

Bella noticed the change in atmosphere from the sunny courtyard to this room which felt like a dungeon to her. She could almost hear the screams of the women who were slaughtered here. She had read Mina Murray's journal recounting the horrors which took place in this room which has seemingly to been touched in over 123 years. The bodies had been removed and some of the blood cleaned. That seemed to be the only thing which had changed. Dracula could account to that fact. The chair he sat in as he watched his wolves devour countless nuns still sat where he had pulled it. What stood out to both Dracula and Arabella was the shiny plaque mounted to the wall, almost taking up its whole length and covered in tin-type photographs.

The room felt stuffy and congested like her chest felt during allergy season, let by candles, "This plaque commemorates all of the women who died here. We were lucky enough to find photos of our former sisters hidden away in a storage closet before the memorial was finished after the tragedy struck. Perhaps that was God's way to be sure these women were remembered." Dracula's eyes immediately locked with the still one's of Agatha Van Helsing mounted to the wall before Sister Lucille pointed it out to Arabella ho had never actually seen what Agatha looked like, "This is your aunt here. You look a bit like her."

Bella stared at the tin portrait of Agatha Van Helsing, noting how her every feature matched the features of her mother. She had to wipe a tear away when her index finger traced the outline of Agatha's face, "She looks just like my mother. Identical almost. Would you mind if I took a picture?"

Bella pulled out her phone and took a quick picture. She barely noticed the look on Dracula's face which was so focused on the picture before the two of them, "It's believed she died right here in this room with the rest of her sisters, but your aunt's body was never found. Neither was the body of Jonathan Harker."

"Wolves are known to drag their pray for miles to eat in their home territory," Arabella muttered flatly as another tear rolled down her face. When she felt Dracula's hand on her shoulder, it took everything in her not to pull away. Arabella knew better than what the nun was telling her. 

"I'll give you two a few minutes to mourn, if you'd like," Sister Lucille offered with a loving pat on Bella's shoulder.

She knew the wolves which attacked St. Mary's convent only did so by the command of the man standing behind her with his hand rubbing up and down her arm in an attempt to make her feel better. She couldn't be angry with Dracula. She knew he was a different person then. He learned to control himself and found a way to feed without killing others or taking the chance of them becoming the walking dead, but still feed like the connoisseur he was. He'd changed for her, so she took his hand in her own and kissed it when she saw the dread on his face. He needed not say a word to Arabella because she knew he would have loved Agatha the way he loved her and a twinge of jealousy befell her because had Agatha not rejected the Count completely, it would be Agatha by his side and not Arabella. Dracula looked at Agatha's picture the way one would look at a lost love, a deceased wife, and Bella caught onto that.

"Maybe it was a mistake that we came here," Dracula murmured as he pulled Bella in for a tight embrace. He felt her sadness. She cried now because Agatha resembled her mother. He cried now because he genuinely loved Agatha Van Helsing," If you'd like to go, we can."

Bella reached to cup his cheek, fingertips soothing his sadness, "Why don't you go wait in the car. I'll be out shortly. I still want to know more about her, but I'm not going to make you sit through this. I know you loved her."

"You need to know, Bella," Dracula whispered as he heard Sister Lucille making her way back to them, "just because I loved Agatha does not mean I only love you because you remind me of her. It's you I love. I love your soul and who you are and how you are different from Agatha."

"I know," Bella smiled. "Now, go. I will see you in a few minutes."


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment

Arabella thanked the sister, leaving her at the gate with a small wave before rejoining Dracula in the town car which waited out front for her. Dracula waiting until the convent was out of view before he smashed his lips to hers, but the metallic taste on his tongue was undeniable and Bella pulled away. She could tell by the look in the vampire's eyes that he was filled with grief and flicked the switch to put the partition between the back seat and the driver. She pulled him to her, resting his head against the crook of her throat. His deep breath was undoubtedly drawing in the smell of Bella's blood. She had noticed he had starting using her scent as she would use lavender essential oils. They calmed her and so it seemed her blood calmed him.

"Did you feed? Are you full?" Bella whispered. The partition wasn't soundproof, but she knew her whispers would not penetrate it. Dracula didn't answer her. He just focused on timing his breaths with the beating of her heart and the thump of her pulse in his ears. "I tasted blood when you kissed me, Vlad. Are you full?"

When he looked up at her, a red ring around his irises gave him away, "I'm always hungry, darling. You know that." Any girl in her position would have been scared senseless, but she was not. Ari knew his moods and knew his mannerisms, but she never knew his grief. Sadness wasn't an emotion he had ever shown her before until today, eyes watery and red. When she tilted hr neck to the side, baring it to him with complete consent, he pushed away from her, "No, Arabella. Do not offer yourself to me. I almost lost you once and I don't know if I'd be able to control myself right now."

"Did you kill the person you just drank or did you control your urges like we had practiced?" Bella wondered. She reached back behind head to shift her braided hair to the other side of her neck to give him better access. The bite mark on her throat was the palest of purples and raised ever so slightly. It looked like a typography map of the Bavarian alps which he had grown to love. She met Dracula's eyes as he placed a large hand around the underside of her chin to get a better look. The pulse point thumped almost wildly and her breathing was hastened, but he could not decide off she was scared or not. The dainty cross around her neck glinted in the sunlight. Bella sighed as the grip Dracula had on her throat tightened, "I trust you to control yourself. You've been practicing." Her left hand squeezed his thigh while her right grasped almost desperately at the hand around her neck. His grip was getting a little too tight for her liking. It wasn't until she started clawing at his hand with both of hers that he relinquished hi grip on her neck, apologizing profusely as he watched the color come back to her cheeks, "It's okay, Vlad. I'm fine."

"Are you sure about this?" Dracula asked as softly as he could with his voice going hoarse. The smell of her was becoming too much to bare, "What do you want to dream about?"

"Surprise me," Arabella sounded exasperated as he pulled her into his lap to straddle him. She'd been in this position with him before, but they'd hardly consummated their relationship besides fooling around under covers at ungodly hours of the night, so her heart beat a bit faster with him so close to her. "Vlad," she pleaded half-heartedly, "just bite me. You'll feel better."

The gasp Bella made when his teeth reopened the scar Lucy left on her throat made him twitch with a strange concoction of lust and fear that he didn't quite understand, but when her blood touched his tongue, fear quickly faded and pleasure became the kingpin. She tasted like what he could only imagine heaven felt like. Her blood was a familiar flavor that made him nostalgic for Agatha once more because the last of Arabella was so similar that he compared it to when Arabella smelled a certain scent and said it reminded her of her childhood, but she still couldn't place what it was or what part of her childhood it reminded her of. The gurgled huff from his love above him reminded him of the task at hand: control. He focused her and he focused on making her feel anything other than the pain of his teeth ripping into her so he made her dream an opiate induced dream fueled by the spirits which now lived inside of him and helped him grow into the man Arabella had needed, one who could control himself and drink from her without fear of killing her or knocking her back into the medically induced coma the Jonathan Harker Foundation had put her under after Lucy's attack.

Was surrounded Arabella was the Bavarian alps as she sipped tea at some undisclosed shop with two identical women sitting before her. Their only differences were attire and hair length before the spoke, making it obvious which one was Zoe and which one was Agatha. It wasn't that Arabella was happier to see her mother over Agatha, but a nasty little thought itched up her spine when she realized that Dracula was able to place her before these women because they resided in his veins. He could conjure up Agatha whenever he pleased and that sparked jealousy in the pit of her stomach. 

"Bella," Zoe beamed as she stood from the table to wrap her daughter up into a tight squeeze, "you look fantastic. I'm so glad you're okay. You have no idea how worried I was when Lucy attacked you."

Zoe looked so well rested and so happy, nothing like Bella had ever seen. When Arabella was young, her parents fought constantly and she never saw Zoe happy or well-rested, not even after the divorce, "So do you, Mom. I've missed you."

Agatha sat there quietly as Zoe poured over Bella's appearance and how it seemed Dracula was taking fantastic care of her while she helped him become more human than beast, "What you've done to him is remarkable, Arabella. I cannot say anyone else would have been able to control him like you have."

"He loves me," Arabella remarked top her aunt which she used to look up to and aspire to be once upon a time, but the insecurity that Lucy had engrained in Bella for years rose to the surface. She could almost hear a snotty remark from Lucy about how she wasn't good enough along with 'See, Bells, he'd even pick an old woman over you. God, you're pathetic.' 

Agatha took the girl's hand in hers with what seemed to be a sad smile, "He must. He wouldn't have changed for just anyone."

"He would have for you," Bella nearly hissed as her attempt to hold back the feelings Lucy had instilled into her failed. How could she be like this to a woman she had always aspired to be?

A belly laugh passed over Agatha's lips, "Don't be silly, child. He would not have made these changes for me because I would not have made any for him. You two have grown together."

The vision in front of her whirled like it was going down a drain and sh tried to hold onto Zoe, tried to cling to her so she wouldn't leave, but as the world came crashing to a halt she met the dark eyes of Dracula who hovered over her now in the hotel bed they were sharing. He had showered and changed and so it seems had she as her hair was wet and sticking to her forehead. Her arms immediately wrapped around her vampire to pull him down to rest on top of her small frame, squishing her, but she liked the way his weight felt above her. She took in a deep breath of the body wash he used and how his masculine scent contrasted with the feminine one which clung to her own skin. 

The throbbing in her throat was a pleasurable sort of pain as she pressed her fingers against the already healing tissue, "How long was I out?"

"About an hour," Dracula smiled down at her. His disposition was much calmer now as he brushed her raven hair from her face, "You look a lot like Anne Boleyn like this."

Bella stared down at herself in a silk, emerald slip and nearly black hair loose and draped over her shoulders. It was obvious the vampire dressed and staged her after her bathed her, "I love you, Vlad. How long did you feed on me?"

His smile was small, "Two minutes at the most. I was worried any longer would be too much. You've only just recovered from Lucy's attack." When Arabella wrapped her legs around his waist, Dracula couldn't hide the grin on his face, "Miss Helsing, you have been too eager today. We have not done this yet. Are you sure?"

Arabella unwrapped the towel from around the vampire's hips before shimmying her slip up enough to make this work, "I'd prefer it if you called me 'Mrs. Balaur.'"


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment!!!

Arabella gave a small huff as she rolled herself off of her lover, plopping down onto the bed next to him. All she could comprehend was the pounding of her heartbeat in her ears. Her skin was flushed and overheated, so the cold arms and body that pressed against her were more than welcoming as Dracula pulled Bella to his chest. He tucked her head neatly under his chin and stroked hr hair which seemed a mile long. Bella's fingers traced the present indents she left in the exposed skin of his chest that matched the tips of her fingernails. The ones not concealed by his chest hair didn't seem as noticeable as she remembered the marks she had left on other men she had been with, but those men were mortal.

"I don't know if I should be proud that I've made your heart beat so quickly or if I should be worried about your well-being," Dracula chuckled as Bella continued to pant against his chest. Her lungs were having a hard time keeping up with the demands of her heart, "Do I need to call an ambulance?"

The hiccuping-laugh Ari gave as she pulled herself away from the man cradling her was sarcastic, but her smile was loving as she pulled his shirt over her head, "Narcissistic bastard, I'm not used to the speed you're able to keep." She reached for a scrunchy. She was coated in a thin sheen of sweat that caused her hair to stick to her skin and she couldn't stand it, "Though I have to say I've had better."

The bellowing laugh Dracula gave at her comment made her grin from ear to ear. He knew she was joking with him and his skills were very impressive; her moans were proof enough of that, "You should know better than to try and bruise the ego of a god." He pulled himself from the mattress, not even bothering to put something over herself like she had with his shirt. His arms entangled her again and pulled her close. He towered over her as he always did, but she looked so tiny in his shirt which almost fell to her knees, "When you insult a god, you get punished."

"I really hope that's a promise," Bella stood on her tip toes top let him know she needed him to lean down to kiss her lips, but he denied her, so she steeled with a kiss on his chest instead. 

They stood silent for a while as he held her close and stare over her head to the mirror across from him. He watched their reflection of her tucked under his chin with a red velvet scrunchy holding her hair in a high pony tail which ended just at where the natural arch of her back sat, black hair against porcelain skin. The moles on her back created a constellation he had memorized months ago of which he enjoyed connecting the points together every time she fell asleep on her stomach. His own reflection was that of a corpse clinging to a girl whose skin was so plump and full of life and whose blood he could hear rushing through her veins. Behind him stood the figure of a woman the same age as the girl in his arms wearing a sparkling pink dress much shorter the it should have been with curly hair just passed her shoulders. Those eyes were unmistakable and so was the condescending look on her face. When Arabella attempted to turn in his arms to stare at their reflection as well, he almost tried to stop her, but she had no reaction to the reflection standing right behind Dracula. She didn't even see her deceased friend standing behind the count as she smiled into the glass, one arm reaching up to run her fingers through Dracula's hair. Though Bella was a vision in his white button down shirt with the buttons only done up enough to barely cover her breasts, he couldn't take his eyes off of Lucy's reflection.

"What are you staring at?" Bella whispered, fear rising in her as the studied Dracula's features. "Vlad, are you okay?" She spun on her heels to cup his cheeks in her hands, finally bringing his gaze to her eyes and away from the deadly gaze of Lucy Westenra, "You look like you've seen a ghost."

The way Dracula pulled himself away from Arabella's embrace stung the girl just enough to punch a Dracula-sized hole in the self-esteem Dracula had built up for her through grunted compliments and guttural moans. She had opened her mouth to say something, anything really, but her words escaped her as she caught his eyes in the mirror as he stormed over to where the mirror hung on the wall. He stared intently through the looking glass with a scowl on his brow before his fist collided with the specter standing behind Arabella. Glass exploded from the point of contact. Dracula didn't even acknowledge Bella's shocked screech as she continued to the bathroom to do the same to the mirror there. Bella kept asking what was wrong, her voice starting out at a scream, but dying down to a whisper when she heard commotion coming down the hallway outside of their hotel room, but he still ignored her. It wasn't until he had pushed her aside to answer the door that he even glanced Arabella's way, sending the manager who had came to see what the ruckus was about in Hungarian. She could have only assumed he told the man to fuck off in the foreign language. The manager gave the girl a sad look as he noticed the tears welling in her eyes.

Bella didn't dare move from her spot as Dracula slammed the door in the manager's face. Broken glass surrounded her bare feet and she wouldn't risk cutting herself, not while Dracula was the way he was, "They probably think you were beating me. They're probably going to call the police. We should really get going." Dracula did not respond to her words. He didn't even flinch when Bella's voice cracked and a whimper escaped her lips. Normally just the slightest inkling that Arabella was upset was enough to bring Dracula to her side in an instant, but it wasn't enough here as he threw their clothes into suit cases, "What the hell is going on? We were fine. Did I do something wrong?"

Dracula sauntered over to her and she couldn't help flashing back to a time when her father towered over her the way Dracula was now with that god-awful sneer on his face. He pulled his own shirt from Bella's body before thrusting a pair of leggings and a sweatshirt into her hands with a pair on pink crocs to protect her feet from the glass around them. She slipped her clothes on quickly, trying not to flinch as she watched him walk easily over the shards on the carpet. He was redressed in the blink of an eye. Their things were packed and he carried all of it out the door. She followed cautiously, avoiding the gazes from fellow guests who stood in the hallway. They stared her down with pity, whispers rising as Dracula aggressively stabbed the elevator button with a clawed finger. Those people had to be talking about them. She even heard a few say in English how young girls like her would do anything to keep a rich older man like him and it made hr nauseous. They didn't know her. They didn't know Dracula, but Bella wasn't sure she even knew Dracula at that moment.

"Did I do something?" Arabella whispered curtly in a way that let her hide the way her voice wanted to crack with all of the emotion boiling inside of her, "If I have, please tell me what I've done."

Dracula dropped the things he held and grabbed her waist, lifting and pinning her to the wall with a rough kiss that was surly bruising and turning her lips purple. When he placed her back to her feet and regathered their things, he took her hand gently in his free hand, "You've done nothing wrong, my love."

"Then why di-"

"Hush," he bit. "No questions. Not until we are away from here at least."

In the months she had lived with the vampire, she couldn't recall him ever being this quiet. He hadn't spoken a word to her until they had made their way to from Budapest into Walachia, Romania. A towering castle sat up on one of the Carpathian Mountains, making her feel small as a carriage brought them up to the castle which had somehow survived the bombings of two world wars and god knows how many other conflicts since Dracula left it to pursue Jonathan Harker in Budapest. Dracula tipped the driver handsomely from bringing them to the foot of the castle which had taken a lot of convincing as rumors of the palace still circulated about what beast could live inside. Bella barely noticed the driver cross himself when Dracula turned his back with Bella's luggage in tow. She gave the man a small smile before he sped away.

The excellent condition the castle was in was enough to make anyone awe, but Bella had more important things on her mind as she followed Dracula up the winding stone stairs and through the castle to a bedroom which hadn't been cleaned, surly, in over 100 years, but its condition was superb, "You haven't spoken to me in almost 24 hours. I don't like this. What did you see back there? "


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a fun chapter to write! Please comment!!!

Bella stood in the corner of the bedroom as she watched workers take away the old mattress which was surly filled with hay. The workers were were cautious around her as she stared at them as they removed the old bedding which was surly dry-rotted from the hundred years it sat in a room covered in dust. She hadn't seen Dracula all day and the castle was too big for her to track him down. She assumed the he knew the workers would be more comfortable without him around, so she supervised them as the placed a boxspring and fluffy mattress on the bed frame made of ornately carved wood. 

Without a way to properly communicate with the men, she pointed to the curtains. Vlad had said they should be bringing new drapes. The men who she would have normally avoided while walking on the street alone at night seemed to cower before her, pulling the drapes from where they were mounted against the wall before scurrying to fetch the fresh drapes. The sun flooded in through the window and allowed her the pleasure of looking out over the carpathian mountains. Some in the distance even had snow on the tops of them.

"Help us," Arabella muttered to herself when she noticed the scratches on the glass obstructed her vision. The words were upside down on the glass and cast a shadow right-side up on the floor. 

Her socked feet padded down the stone floor as she sprinted passed workers carrying thick, velvet draped. she bumped into a few on the men, tossing an English apology over her shoulder which she knew they could not understand, but she was in too much of a hurry to care or try to give a proper one. She didn't know a single word in Romanian and she didn't dare attempt it because she knew she'd butcher the language. She found Dracula lounging in the dining room beside a large fire with his laptop resting on his lap and her cellphone in his hand. He held it up towards the sky.

"You really put me in Jonathan's room?" Bella huffed, still feeling rejection in the pit of her stomach. They hadn't had a proper conversation since he smashed the mirror and she still felt as though he was angry at her for some unknown reason.

His eyes glanced her way, but his body didn't move from its position besides a taps at the keys of his laptop, "How does that hotspot work again? I need to talk to Frank." His eyes scanned over her figure which was clad in a simple red t-shirt and a pair of jeans which fit her too well, but her scowl was that of Agatha Van Helsing and it made him smile, "Get over here, silly girl. I need your help."

Her childish stomps amused him greatly and the way she ripped her phone from his hand caused him to snort out a laugh, "You didn't even turn the hotspot on," she sighed, reaching over Dracula to tap the Bluetooth button on his laptop. Ari tried batting him away when he grabbed her waist and pulled her down to straddle his lap, "Stop. I'm not in the mood?"

"Is this still about the mirror?" Dracula huffed, but he kept his grip on her.

"No," she bit, "now, I want to know why you put me up in Jonathan's room."

"It was the only one not infested with black mold, Arabella," Dracula rolled his eyes at her while his thumbs stroked her ribs through her shirt. "Forgive me for trying to keep you alive while you are here." Bella's eyes were full of disbelief as she cocked her head to the side which allotted him a wonderful view of her throat which hadn't seemed to start healing properly yet, "I did not make that your bedroom for some strange, perverted reason if that's what you're wondering. No ulterior motive here, my love."

Arabella ran her fingers through his hair, "How can you act like nothing is wrong? You freaked out on me for no reason back in Hungary. You haven't spoken to me properly in almost 24 hours and, now, you pretend everything is perfectly okay." She traced his lips with her index finger, "What did you see? What happened?"

"Never you mind," his hands traveled up her shirt, finger tips grazing the softness of her skin and her stomach. "I think there are more important things for you to worry about."

Her hands cupped the vampire's cheeks and his lips puckered as if he were expecting her to kiss him, "You need to tell me what's going on or I will hop on the next flight back to England. I will not be kept in the dark." She released Dracula's face after pecking him softly on the lips so he knew she were not too mad at her, but her threat still stood, "I will not be in a relationship with a man who does not see me as his equal, as his partner, so you need to tell me what's going on."

The vampire picked her up and off his lap to place her feet steadily on the floor, a cheeky smile on his face when he noticed her socks were fluffy red and so long that they laid over the hem of her skinny jeans above her ankles. He was said by the works coming down the grand staircase with old drapes in their arms. Their bodies stiffened as Dracula, as menacing as he seemed, approached them with a proper thank you and handed them a check for their work before bidding them 'good-day'. Maybe he had been drinking too much of her blood. He was being too nice. This wasn't like him, but, perhaps, he was really trying to be better for her. The Dracula she had met in the glass cage at the Jonathan Harker Foundation yelled 'Boo' in everyone's faces who showed their fear just to get a rise out of them. Now, he was trying to relax the nerves of the men rather than terrify them for his own amusement. She was actually quite proud of him.

When the men were gone, Dracula stood mere inches from her. She almost had to lean her head all the way back to meet his eyes, "Blood is lives, Bella. Everything is in the blood. You've read Agatha's journals. You should know what that means by now. Your mother figured it out. You have the Van Helsing wit. You should be able to as well."

"Blood is lives," she repeated back to herself in a hushed tone as she stared down at their feet. That was when she remembered how Zoe's voice changed that night Lucy bit her. Zoe wasn't herself and seemed to know Dracula so much more than she actually did because it was Bella who spent more time with him, not Zoe. The sample of Dracula's blood that Zoe had taken had gone missing the day Zoe quit the foundation, "How did I not figure this pout before? It was right in front of me."

Dracula grinned as he took Bella's chin between his fingers to make her meet his eyes again, "That's my girl."

"Agatha did a lot of writing aboard the Demeter after she presumed you were dead," Arabella was nearly rambling. "You told her everything. You killed the Bavarian to show off your German to the duchess who was your intended target. Everyone on that ship had something you wanted. Drinking their blood was how you got it."

"Precisely."

"My mother drank your blood," she whispered. "When she did, she absorbed what was left of Agatha. That's how she figured you out." Her skin was covered in goosebumps as his fingers toyed with Agatha's crucifix which sat at the base of her throat, "That's why you can go into the sun and why you do not fear the cross any more. Those things never affected you before. You only assumed they did, so you avoided them."

"I must say, I'm quite proud of you. You've figured it out the quickest. It took Agatha over 123 years to do it and she needed the help of your mother. you did it all on your own," Dracula beamed, in love with her mind as much as he was with her body. "Now, put the pieces together."

"Blood is lives," she repeated his words once more with so much confidence. "They live inside of you, allowing you to tap into what they were as people to, for lack of a better word term, grow as a person. Jonathan Harker was young and well mannered. You fed from him and that made you young with English manners and his blood improved your English to complete perfection. Lucy welcomed death which is why you chose her because you feared death." Arabella took his hands in her own, "They haunt you don't they?"She knew she was right when Dracula avoided her gaze and pulled away from her when she stroked his cheek with her fingertips. "Who did you see in the mirror, Vlad?"

"Your dear Miss Westenra," his voice was flat as he stared over her head.

Bella squeezed his hand tightly, making him meet her eyes. Hers were filled with tears which she was trying to blink back, "So, Zoe is in there too?" Dracula nodded. "How many people much you feed from before someone is no longer in your system?"

"It depends on how big their personality was, sometimes twenty and sometimes 120. Agatha is still there after all of these years. No one has been able to flush her out yet," Dracula smiled in his own amusement, not even noticing the minuscule change in Bella's demeanor or how she moved away from him ever so slightly until he reached for her and his attempt fell short by a few inches.

"So, if I were to drink your blood, I could be able to see my mother again?"

Dracula's eyes went from loving to deadly in no time at all, "I will not allow that."

"Why not? You get to keep Agatha with you. You still love her, but I'm not allowed to use this thing you have to be able to have my mother back?" Her voice was raising in volume and her accent slipped to that southern American twang hat he liked that she tried to hide.

Dracula seized her shoulders in an attempt to quiet her, shouting over her ramblings, "Why does it bother you so much that I love Agatha? The key word, Arabella is 'loved'. I love you more than you will ever know."

"Because you tried to change her into a vampire. You tried so hard because you wanted to spend eternity with her. You won't even entertain that option when it comes to me," Bella half cried."I had to basically beg you to bite me after we left the convent. You didn't even allow Agatha the choice. You made that decision for her. That's how badly you want her."

"I don't want to kill you, Arabella!" Dracula yelled back, shaking her shoulders almost violently, and Bella's reaction was not what he expected it to be. Dracula had expected her to slap him, but she didn't. She immediately broke down into tears before prying herself from his iron grip. He watched her run from him, something he never expected her to ever do.


	29. Chapter 29

Arabella sat atop the fluffy mattress in what used to be Jonathan Harker's room in Dracula's castle. If it weren't for the full moon shining in through the window and the several candle sticks scattered around the room, she wouldn't be able to see the writings in front of her. The century-old notebook in her hands creaked as she bent the spine back to get a better look at Agatha's entries about Jonathan Harker's time in the castle. She had read and reread these pages a million times in her life, but sitting where Jonathan slept and staring at the window which prompted him to search the castle for whoever it was that scrawled 'help us' on the glass made the writings all the more eerie. 

Ari rubbed her eyes so roughly that her vision was dotted with spots. When her vision cleared, her heart raced at the sight of a man sitting at the desk across from her bed, scribbling something on the paper in front of him. When he turned to face her, Bella's breath caught in her throat. The man smiled and made his way to sit at her feet. If his face wasn't so familiar, Bella would have been terrified, but she had stared at his face on countless occasions, framed in gold with a still smile on his face, Jonathan Harker himself. She reached out to touch his hand as he did the same. It was like a scene out of a scary movie where the victim tries to touch the ghost and her hand falls right through the specter, but his fingertips met hers with a shocking warmth.

Harker spoke first because Bella was unable to form a proper syllable, "You have Mina's smile."

"Dracula always says it's more like Agatha's," she whispered shakily.

"I see her too, but it's more Mina if you ask me," Jonathan pushed a lock of her hair behind her left ear. " Do you know what happened to me here?"

Bella nodded, pushing Agatha's journal towards Harker, "It's all right here. Everything you told Agatha."

Jonathan looked just like her father, she noted. His portrait at the foundation was a great likeness, but her father's face was much closer. Bella would have been more apprehensive if it weren't for the soft look on the man's face before her. There wasn't a single angry line on the man's face, only slight smile lines forming. He was young when Dracula made him his victim. Those smile lines would have been deeply indented if Jonathan had made it to her father's age.

Jonathan flipped though the journal to the page with described the undead he found locked away in some hidden cellar, "Beware the undead, Arabella. Once they taste blood, they become vampires."

"Dracula won't let the hurt me," she whispered, remembering the visible anger in the vampire's eyes when he shook her for asking to taste his blood to have some piece of Zoe back. Though she couldn't get that image out of her head and she felt fear crawl up her throat at the thought of it, she knew Dracula would never let the undead harm her in any way.

Bella's head snapped to the side when she felt the bed dip down next to her, "He didn't stop me, Bells."

Lucy sat singed on the edge of Bella's bed. Her crispy fingers reached out to touch Arabella's hair which had grown significantly since the last time Lucy has seen her, but Bella flinched away, that familiar nausea creeping through her body once again as she smelled the scent of burnt and rotting flesh. Arabella had scrambled towards Harker as some sort of protection from Lucy whose fangs were bared to her, but the comfort Bella was seeking was nonexistent when she fell into the arms of Jonathan Harker and saw his face. Jonathan was a pale shell of a man with no hair and lesions all over his body. His fangs were glinting in the candle light along with Lucy's.

Arabella scrambled from her bed and sprinted down the hallway. She was unable to make a sound to signal to Dracula that she was in danger. She didn't dare look behind her because she knew Jonathan and Lucy were at her heels and that turning around would just slow her down, so she just kept running and running, searching for Dracula to save her from his own creation, but he wasn't anywhere to be found. It wasn't until her path was blocked by the hoards of the undead that her vocal cords were able to let out a proper scream, her mother a part of the rotting army.

"Arabella Van Helsing!" Bella shot up in her bed, falling into the waiting arms of Count Dracula. Her frame shook violently as he tried to soothe her, "Darling, it was just a dream." Dracula pulled her from her bed, keeping the covers wrapped around her as he adjusted his hold on her to carry her down the corridors like a groom would do to his bride on their wedding night. 

She let out tears into his neck, soaking the collar of his simple, red, cotton t-shirt. Her arm that was wrapped around his back let fingers fiddle with the waistband of his grey sweatpants. The vampire had finally gotten her to stop screaming and wiped her tears away with soft fingers as he laid her down next to him in his stone crypt which bore his name. The stone against her bare legs caused her to shiver against Dracula as she laid in his crypt with him in only a t-shirt and black lace panties. Normally, being confined like that would have made here itch with claustrophobia, but Dracula's soft whispers in her ear allowed her to relax. His hands splayed across her back after he wrapped her up in her comforter to prevent the chill of the stone from reaching her skin.

Arabella awoke the next morning in her bed as if even Dracula carrying her away was a dream, but her now sweatpants-clad legs told her otherwise. He always put her in some sort of warmer clothes when he would leave her bed. He was afraid she's catch a cold sleeping in just a shirt and panties. The note written in his scrawling handwriting brought some sort of comfort to her when she read that he would be taking care of the rise which resided in boxes beneath the winding corridors of his castle.

She wandered down to the dining room where she found a fresh breakfast laid out for her consisting of every breakfast food she could think of including some Romanian classics. Mimosas were prepared for her as well, placed neatly on a silver tray like everything else on the table. Bella didn't think twice before diving into the steaming breakfast before her. Her mind didn't even wander to the idea that Dracula was currently murdering dozens of lost souls which resided in the winding tunnels below her. She was too starving to think about that. She had been through so much in the past two months and it was starting to take a toll on her body. She was so hungry. 

Dracula joined her a while after she had began eating. He was fresh out of the shower which he had installed yesterday when the workers were still there and smelled fantastic. He had kissed her, tasting the champagne and orange juice on her lips. It made him smile as he noticed the way her eyes were dilated and tipsy in the candlelight and sunlight streaming in from the windows from the above floor.

"Did you take care of..." Dracula didn't even let Arabella finish her sentence before nodding and telling her not to worry about it. Bella set down her drink before standing to straddle him at the table, "I want to go home, back to England."

He stared up at her, thumbs tracing patterns on the outside of her thighs through the fleece of her sweatpants, "Is that truly what you want?"

Bella nodded and pressed her mouth to his, "We've been traveling for months, Vlad. It's time to get back, but you have to promise not to shake me the way you did last night. I can't stand it. You scared me. You reminded me of my dad."

He agreed, pulling a letter from his suitcase which still sat unpacked by the table and handed it to her, "If you truly want to return home, you deserve to have an occupation if you so choose. The Jonathan Harker Foundation has requested that you become their new head of operations and become your mother's successor." Dracula expected Bella to be angry with him for keeping the letter from her which was dated a few days after her mother's funeral, but she wasn't. "If you want the job, it's yours. I spoke with Dr. Bloxham when the letter came into be sure you would still be given the job if I whisked you away for a few months. She promised that the foundation is yours. Your familial right."

The smile on Bella's face was enough to make his heart start beating again if it were possible, so they both packed their bags and he booked two tickets for the two of them, first class on the next flight back to Whitby.


	30. Chapter 30

Arabella seemed almost completely giddy when the plane touched down at the Whitby airport. Dracula could hear her heart pick up in speed when she saw Jack Seward standing there by the baggage claim waiting for her. He had never seen her run so fast with such a big smile on her face. She nearly knocked the doctor off of his feet when she collided with him. Dracula felt like an outsider in Arabella’s world as she poured over the doctor’s appearance. He’d filled out nicely and had a bit more muscle definition. His hair was better styled and he was dressed much sharper than Dracula remembered, but the glare Jack shot him when Arabella leaned over to grab her luggage was exactly the same as it was the night Lucy bit Bella. Unmistakable. 

“I’ve missed you so much,” Bella cooed as she stepped into the car Dracula had arranged to pick them up. She scooted closer to the window and closer to where Jack stood on the sidewalk as Dracula slid in next to her. “Dinner tonight? We need to catch up. It’s been almost 6 months and I’ve missed you.”

Jack shut her car door for her, leaning down to meet her eyes with his forearms resting on the side of the car, “What’s there to catch up on? You look happy and healthy. Human.”

“Oh, come on!” She wined. “We need to have drink at least. I haven’t drank in God knows how long.” Ari flashed a smile towards Dracula who rolled his eyes with a soft smile, “This one doesn’t like my drinking habits.”

“Well, Lucy is the reason you developed them, so the beast is probably right,” Jack snorted, not noticing the slight change in Bella’s demeanor at his comment, her hand clinching Dracula’s with white knuckles.

Bella grabbed Jack’s chin, pulling him down to place a soft kiss on his right cheek, leaving a small smudge of red lipstick behind, “Meet me for dinner, Jack. I need to tell you something important. You’ll want to hear.”

Arabella flopped back into her seat as the car sped away towards Dracula’s penthouse. She laid her head on the vampire’s shoulders with a small huff. He knew what she was thinking, of course. Jack hadn’t forgotten what happened with Lucy who she was sure he still loved. Bella knew Jack hadn’t forgotten what had happened to her, yet she was still traveling the world with the man who killed Lucy and killed her mother and killed her second great grandfather and killed her third great aunt. Bella stiffened softly before relaxing back down because she knew the man next to her was not the same as the man who killed all of those people. He was different now, at least she was pretty sure that was the case.

Back at the penthouse, Bella collapsed onto the bed while Dracula carried in their luggage, unpacking what could be put back in their proper place and throwing dirty clothes in the hamper for the cleaners to take tomorrow, “What do you have to tell Dr. Seward?”

Propping herself up on her elbows, Ari eyed the man before her. Her eyes were narrowed at him because she knew he was trying to talk her out of it, “Well, I’m taking over the foundation. I want him to be a part of it. Mom would have wanted it that way.” The look the vampire gave her was that of disbelief because he knew what the young doctor was really thinking. It was obvious, “Unless you know something I don’t about my mother’s wishes. She is a ‘part of you’ after all.”

“Arabella, do not start this right now,” Dracula warned, pointing a coat hanger at the girl, but her eyes stayed just as fixed on him.

“I’m not starting anything. You know more about her than I do now,” she whispered. “Please tell me if that’s not what she would have wanted.” Dracula joined her in bed, pushing her back onto the fluff. He hovered over her on his hands and knees, “Or you could let me ask her myself. Make me a part of you.”

Dracula pushed Bella’s hair away from her throat which bared his bite on one side a cluster of small freckles on the other. When he pressed his lips to the scar on your neck, she braced herself for the feeling of his teeth ripping open the old wound, but the wet kiss he left instead caused her to sigh, her arms winding around his back, “You’re playing a dangerous game. I haven’t properly eaten since Bavaria.” 

“I’m not afraid,” she muttered into his hair as she raked her nails up his back. “I haven’t been properly fucked since Budapest,” her legs wrapped themselves around his waist as she peppered kisses around his ear.

Dracula spoke her name like a warning as he smelled the oxytocin race through her veins, “Do you want me to rip you to shreds?” The breathy laugh that left her lips was almost too much for him, closing his eyes and holding his breath so that way she couldn’t overwhelm all of his senses. She let out a disappointed huff when he pulled himself away from her grasp, tossing her a fresh set of clothes for her to change into for her dinner with Jack, “Let me eat while you are out with Dr. Seward. Then, we can see about sex. Right now, I don’t trust myself not to change you right now.”

The sun sank in the sky as Arabella finished reapplying her lipstick, moving all of her hair over one shoulder so the vampire could zip up her cocktail length dress. The black of the fabric contrasting with the ivory of her skin, green eyes shining brighter than the emerald around her neck. 

Dracula kissed her cheek, “Take my credit card with you. Dinner will be on me.”

“Isn’t it always?” She smiled back. “I’m the only one of us that eats food.”

He gave a curt nod, “Where are you meeting the young doctor?”

“Greek Tycoon, I believe,” she sighed, fidgeting with the necklace she was wearing. “I haven’t had a proper conversation with him in so long, not since before Lucy…”

“I’m sure everything will go swimmingly.”


	31. Chapter 31

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE COMMENT!!!! I have some great ideas in mind, so please comment to keep me motivated!!!

“You look different,” Jack mentioned as he pushed Arabella’s chair in for her before taking his seat across from her at the table. 

Bella was far from the made-up version Lucy created. Her face was done up more naturally besides the red lipstick she had on. A few spots were still visible on her face and not hidden by her foundation. The mole between her lip and nose on the right side was still recognizable as one. Those green eyes popped under a thin coat of mascara. She looked perfect if you asked Jack, but he still held a bit of animosity towards her for leaving after Zoe’s death to travel the world with the vampire who killed her mother, the vampire who tried to kill himself by killing her mother.

Ari shrugged as she smiled at the waiter who poured her a larger than normal cup of red wine, “I look the same as I always have, Jack. You’re just finally looking at me and not Lucy.”

“That’s not it,” Jack shook his head before cocking it to the side. He couldn’t quite place his finger on it, “You’re almost glowing. You’re not the same-old you.”

“Perhaps, I’ve just got some good news to tell you,” she beamed over the rim of her glass before taking a small sip. Jack watched her ardently because he wanted to be sure she was really drinking the wine. He didn’t want to have to stake Bella like he did Lucy. “The Jonathan Harker Foundation has offered me Zoe’s old position of which I am completely unqualified for. I’m no doctor, but I still need one by my side to help me along. You know Bloxham and I never had the best relation ship. She was mom’s friend. She’ll be staying on with the foundation, of course, but I’ll need a right-hand.”

Her eyes were pleading him and her bottom lip pouted ever-so-slightly in a way he had never seen before. Perhaps that was something that was useful in getting her way with Dracula, but Jack was unsure, “You want me to come work for you full time at the foundation?”

“If that’s something you would be interested in,” she whispered, ripping a garlic-y breadstick apart in her fingers to nibble on the smaller half. “I’m planning on doing a re-brand of the foundation, bring it away from the occult to focus more on medicine. Of course, there will still be that underlying study, but it will focus more so on the undead and not vampires.” Arabella couldn’t quite read Jack’s expression as she explained her ideals, but she continued on anyways, “I want to understand why some walk after death and why some do not. This study will have nothing to do with Dracula, only in determining why some people never actually die after they’re dead.”

Jack nodded, taking the other half of the breadstick and taking a bite, “Then, what’s to be done about Dracula?”

“He’s different now, really. I wouldn’t stay if he were still the same monster who killed Lucy,” Bella sighed, the vision of Lucy’s charred body causing her to gulp down the remainder of her wine and pour herself another glass. “You have to trust me on this. Him and I have been working on it, but his dietary requirements are difficult to meet. That’s why he has agreed to try and continue with the student-trial that was originally planned, but he will be given full freedom to help pick the donors as well as be free to come and go as he pleases. I won’t lock him up in that box again.”

“He killed Lucy and your mother,” Jack repeated.

“But he’s changed,” Bella reiterated. “I’ve been drawing my own blood and he’s been making due with that. He has a lot of self-control now and I’m sure most of that is because he has to if he doesn’t want to kill me and he does not want to kill me.”

“Fine,” Jack smiled, seeing how genuine Bella’s hope was.

Two months had passed since Jack had agreed to take on the position at the Jonathan Harker Foundation who was now one of the leading researchers in finding a vaccine for Covid-19 while studying the affects the countless deaths caused by the virus had on the number of walking-dead. Jack sat beside Bella at her desk, masks on and social distancing as best as the could. The two poured over countless documents stating the various effectiveness of different vaccines the foundation was working on, but their concentration was obliterated by a knock on the doorjamb of what used to be Zoe’s office and was now Bella’s.

The two looked up to see count Dracula looming in the door way, no mask on as the rest of the staff was required to have and it made Bella roll her eyes, “You could at least pretend to have the common decency to wear a mask.” 

Bella stood from her seat to meet the vampire at the door. Even in her heels she was so much smaller than him, “Arabella, you are aware that I cannot catch a disease, aren’t you? I’m a vampire.”

Dracula pinched the front of Bella’s mask with his thumb and forefinger, pulling it down just enough to kiss her before pulling it back up over her nose and mouth, “Not everyone in this building knows that. People will think I’m making an exception for you and will ask for the same. I’m not taking the chance of this place being shut down.”

Dracula waved off her worry before plopping himself onto the sofa which sat in the corner of her office, “What’s on the menu today, darling?”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to go ask the administrative staff,” Bella huffed, flipping through another stack of reports jack had handed her from the fax machine. “I’m swamped and haven’t had the time to be a housewife. Besides, you haven’t put a ring on my finger yet, so do not expect me to go out of my way for you when I have the world on my shoulders right now.”

She had tried to keep her tone light, but he could smell the frustration flowing through her veins, so when she threw one of her masks his way, he put it on without hesitation because she knew she wasn’t in the mood. That was when he noticed the slightest bulge in her stomach that he hadn’t seen before and the way the lights shown off her hair and skin were different than normal. She was eating more, he had noticed, but she was just comfortable around him now. He didn’t mind her gaining weight. He quite liked it, actually. Besides, stressful nights at the office always led to fast food.

“I’ve been trying to propose and you keep saying ‘no’ to me,” the vampire countered as he watched her slink back down into her chair and her hands fall onto her stomach. She obviously wasn’t feeling well.

She cut her eyes at him as she began to flip through another mound of paperwork that needed her signature, “Go get your dinner, Count Dracula. That’s all of the attention you’ll be getting from me tonight.”

“You sound like Agatha,” he countered. “What would you like me to bring you for dinner tonight or will you be coming home? I haven’t enjoyed sleeping alone these past few weeks,” he picked up the throw blanket he knew she was sleeping with in her office overnight after passing out from exhaustion.

“Vlad,” she glared, begging him to leave her be so she could get some work done, “go eat. I’m busy.”

“And now you sound like your mother,” Jack laughed, sharing amusement with the vampire who now towered over Bella sitting in her swivel-chair.

Arabella pushed Jack in his chair across the room and kicked Dracula with her pointed heel in the shin, “Keep it up and I’ll make you both leave me alone until this pandemic is over.” 

“Someone is on their cycle,” Jack mumbled which caused Dracula to snort. The two had grown too close for Bella’s liking. They mainly just made fun of her together now that Dracula proved to the young doctor that he was no longer a threat to society.

Before Bella could glare at the doctor and her undead boyfriend, her eyes went wide and her jaw went slack as she mumbled under her breath, “I’m not. I haven’t been since before Romania.”

“That’s not funny,” Jack snickered. “You can’t be pregnant. Remember, a few years ago you had a scare with that guy Lucy made you hook up with when you lost your v-card. Doctor told you not to worry because you can’t have kids.”

“I’ve never been late before, though,” she muttered through clenched teeth, her eyes and the eyes of the vampire never unlocking.

Jack shook her shoulders, trying to knock her out of the trance she was in, “Arabella Van Helsing, you can’t get pregnant. You cannot have children. The doctor told you so!”

Bella turned green in an instant, doubling over to vomit in the trashcan beneath her desk, but it wasn’t vomit that left her mouth. It was thick, red blood that ran down the corner of her mouth as every ounce of color in her face drained immediately. Dracula was beside her, catching her as she fell out of her chair and into his arms. He wiped he blood from her mouth, She sat on the cold tile in Dracula’s cold arms as Jack opened a bottle of water and pressed it to her lips, but she refused it. The though of injecting anything making her want to hurl again.

“Are you vomiting because you’re stressed?” Jack muttered, trying to keep her focused on him and not her own stomach. “You get sick whenever you’re stressed out. Maybe you should go home?”

“Maybe you should mind your damn business,” she barked back, standing quickly much to Dracula’s protests. She slipped her heels on and stormed out of the room. She couldn’t be pregnant. It just wasn’t possible. Dracula had been trying to reproduce for four hundred years and never once succeeded, so why would he now? He had told her he kept human brides before and none of then were successful in getting pregnant, so why her? Why now?

“Dr. Bloxham,” Arabella called as she entered the lab which the older doctor way using a pipette too portion out different chemicals, “I need you to run a few tests for me.”

“Ari, I’m a bit busy right now. Can it wait?” The woman signed, recognizing the tone in her voice as the same one Zoe had whenever something was extremely urgent.

“No, it cannot. I think I’m pregnant," she whispered, her harsh tone breaking up as her voice cracked.

Bloxham met Bella's eyes with same fear that Arabella had in hers, instructing another doctor to finish up as she rushed Bella into the blood-storage room, "Blood test or stick?"

"Blood test," she barely whispered. "They're more accurate."


	32. Chapter 32

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE COMMENT!!!

“How long will it take?” Arabella sighed, pressing a thick cotton ball to the inside of her right elbow.

Bloxham taped the cotton down as she noticed Ari’s terrified frown, “A few hours. The lab is backed up right now with all of the new donors who have to be screened.” Bloxham cupped Bella’s chin in her hand, “You’re mom was just as scared when she found out she was having you. If Zoe did it, you can.”

“She wasn’t pregnant with a vampire-human hybrid,” Ari grumbled, standing wobbly on her high heels. “This thing could kill me and Dracula won’t hesitate to hurt it if it kills me. I know him too well.” When her blood wouldn’t clot, Bella began to panic, switching out the cotton frantically until Bloxham brushed her hands away to put pressure on the fresh cotton, “Or, I could just miscarry which is very common with my blood type because of the baby isn’t Rh-negative, it will be incompatible with my body.”

Bloxham shushed her as Bella’s blood began to clot finally, “Or, it would be a healthy human baby with zero vampiric traits. You won’t know. You could also just not be pregnant. That’s always possible.”

“But that can’t be the case,” Ari huffed. “You should have seen the look in his eyes. He was so hopeful. According to Jonathan Harker’s account he gave to Agatha, he had been trying to reproduce for four hundred years. I’ve given him hope and I can’t take that away from him.”

“Whether you are pregnant or not, this is your body and you have a choice here,” the older doctor explained as she brushed Bella’s raven hair out of her eyes. “If you are pregnant, it is your choice to have this baby or not. If you decide not to, I will do the procedure. If you want to keep it, I’ll be there to hold your hand just like I was there for your mother.” She wiped tears from Bella’s cheeks with her thumbs as Zoe used to do when she was small, “Go home and I’ll call you when the results are in. I can run this place.”

With a sad smile, Arabella left the room rather quickly. She hadn’t expected her vampire to be right outside the door when she opened it, “Are you pregnant?”

“We won’t know for a few hours,” Bella tried to keep a brave face, but the crack of her voice was betraying her. “Take me home, please.”

Back at the penthouse, Arabella had changed into a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie, pacing around in fluffy socks and biting at her nails. Dracula just watched her from the sofa because he knew there was nothing in this world he could do to calm her. In all honesty, he had a pit in his stomach too. He was nervous. Every time he tried to reproduce, it was with other vampires in which he created, women he didn’t care for and locked in boxes and used just to attempt breeding. Arabella was nothing like those women. He loved her more than his own existence and of anything threatened that, he’d destroy it, be it his own child or not. Dracula had tried to get her to eat, but she refused. Nothing sounded good to her and the blood he offered her in an attempt to entice the appetite of a vampire fetus made her hurl up more blood which he was unable to determine as her own. It didn’t hav the same fragrance as hers always did. This smelled sour to him, not appetizing as Bella always smelled. 

Her phone had been ringing every five minutes because Jack was trying to get an update, but one never came. She was starting to get frustrated with Jack, blocking his number until she knew something more, but she ended up falling asleep on Dracula’s lap. She was curled around him like a caterpillar, so when her phone rang once more, he could barely move enough to grab it without waking up the woman in his arms. Somehow, he managed to do it. His whispered ‘hello’ prompted an inconclusive result.

“When she comes in in the morning, we’ll do an ultrasound to figure out what’s going on,” Dr. Bloxham explained in hushed tones when she heard Arabella’s small snores. “Until then, let her sleep. She’s pretty panicked.”

“She doesn’t need to,” Dracula sighed, brushing the hair out of Arabella’s face. “I’ll do everything for her and this baby.”

“You don’t know that there is a baby yet,” the doctor reprimanded, “and you don’t know if it’s human. It could kill her.”

Bella woke up the next morning wrapped in Dracula’s arms and sheets. When she looked up to study her love’s face, he was sleeping silently with the smallest smile on his lips and she couldn’t imagine him any other way. If she wasn’t pregnant, he’d be so disappointed and want to keep trying, but she was so scared of this. There was too much that she didn’t know. Besides, she never planned on have children. As hard as Zoe had tried to be a good mother, she was too much of a workaholic. Her father, well, there was too much to say about why he wasn’t fit to be a parent. Who was to sat she would be?

The two had spent hours talking about Dracula’s life as a human. He had many children with all of his wives. Plenty of tall, dark, strapping sons to carry on his legacy. All died in battle. His daughters were tall and blonde, marrying powerful men and having many children on their own. He always said how much he adored his children, how they were the light of his life. Now, he was choosing to spend eternity with her and she wasn’t sure she wanted to give him this if she even could. 

So, she squirmed her way out of his arms to get dressed for work. She grabbed the keys to his BMW and left after kissing his cheek, smiling at the loud snore he emitted. In all honesty, she was ready to spend what was left of her mortal life as well as all eternity with him, but, right now, she had to go to work, This baby stuff was driving her nuts, so she put on her tightest skirt and low-cut blouse to make her feel normal again, throwing a cardigan over her shoulders and slipping on a tall pair of heels. Even though she was extremely stressed, she at least looked good.

“Good morning, Ms. Helsing,” the woman at the front desk greeted.

Bella smiled, swiping her ID badge, “Good morning, Margaret. Has Dr. Bloxham gotten here yet?”

“I believe she’s in your office,” the woman stated, going back to her work.

The smell of cinnamon filled her office and made her head throb. She unplugged the wallflower and tossed it in the trash, “I thought I told the staff not to put cinnamon in my office anymore.”

Dr. Bloxham smiled, flipping on the ultrasound machine, “I’m assuming the beast told you the test was inconclusive.”

Arabella laughed and sat down on her sofa, “He didn’t, but I got the text you sent this morning. Let’s get this over with.”

“You don’t sound too excited about this,” Bloxham smiled as she squirted the gel on Ari’s abdomen, rubbing the tool against her skin.

“You wouldn’t be either if you didn’t know what kind of being was growing inside of you,” Bella sighed with her eyes glued to the white squiggles on the black screen. “I just don’t know if I’m ready for this.”

“You have full control over this situation,” the doctor explained again. “This is your body and your choice.”

Bella pointed to a little ball on the screen, her red fingernails contrasting with the black screen, “Is that the baby?”

Bloxham moved the probe to hover directly over the little ball to press into her skin, “But I can’t find a heartbeat. Don’t panic, though. This child is half vampire.”

“Or I’ve miscarried,” she whispered, tears in her eyes until the little limbs moved and flexed. “Did it just move or was that you?”

“That was your child,” Bloxham said with a small smile on her face as she noticed the slightest twinkle in her eyes. “Congratulations, Ms. Helsing, you are about 10 weeks pregnant.” She moved the probe around again to the junction between Ari’s left hip and ribs. A little pounding sound came from the machine, “And there’s the heartbeat. As far as I can tell, there are no visible anomalies.”

“Is that the baby?” Dracula’s voice startled the two women who visibly tensed when he rushed into the room to be at Bella’s side. “That little spot is it?”

Bella nodded, taking the prob from the doctor and handing it to the vampire, “Yeah, that’s him. Dr. Bloxham, can we have some time alone please?” The doctor exited the room, “Move it these way and you can hear the heart.”

“A heartbeat?” Dracula had the biggest grin on his face. “Do you think it’s human?”

“Don’t call him an ‘it’ anymore,” she whispered, hitting the button that would take a picture.

“You can already tell it’s a him?” Dracula was awed as he stared at the screen, trying to make out .

“No, but I could do a blood test to find out, if you want,” Bella smiled.

His large hand cradled her stomach, “I would like that very much.”

“Then we’ll do that.”


	33. Chapter 33

A few weeks had passed since Dracula and Arabella found out they were going to be parents. Dracula was way too excited, impulsively buying things for the baby. He’d bought about three of everything, pink everything if it was a girl, blue everything if it were a boy, and yellow everything just in case Arabella decided not to know the gender once the blood test came back. Though the pent house was huge, it was cluttered with baby stuff and it had started irritating Bella who refused to leave the bedroom because it was the only room not overrun by tiny clothes and socks. She knew Dracula would not make this child want for anything. It would have everything, but she was only worried about the nausea. She always felt sick. She kept throwing up blood. It was starting to worry her.

The cold tile of the bathroom floor was calming as she laid next to the toilet in shorts and a tank top. She was too hot. Her hair stuck to her forehead with sweat even though the air conditioning was pumping as high as it could go. Her skin felt clamy under her fingertips as she put her hands on her stomach. Dracula met her in the bathroom as she pulled herself off the floor to cling to the porcelain again. His clawed fingers gathered her hair to keep it out of her face. He rubbed her back as she cried. He knew she felt horrible.

“You’ve lost all of the color in your face,” he whispered as he gathered her up in his arms. “Maybe we should have Bloxham take a look at you.”

Bella shook her head, but she was so weak she could barely pick her head up off of his shoulder, “I’ve already talked to her. There’s nothing wrong and this is probably just the effect of whatever is inside of me.”

“Wasn’t it you who told me to stop dehumanizing our child?” Dracula whispered, the slightest amusement in his voice as he heard the little whimper she let out against his shoulder.

“That was before it started making me sick all of the damned time,” she grumbled. “I can’t even eat anything without getting sick.”

He placed her into the cushioned rocking chair in the corner of what will soon be the nursery, “Do you want to try blood again this morning?”

“I already did. It made it worse,” she muttered, struggling to pull the throw up over her shivering, but sweating form. “I don’t know what else to do. I can’t do this anymore.”

Bella sat at her desk at the foundation, head in her hands just trying to tone down the swirling in her mind. Everything was blurry. The only solid thing around her was the sound of Jack Seward reading over the qualifications of the new donors. Dracula had been very good about keeping with his diet especially since they found out Bella was expecting. 

As Jack ran his hand up and down her back, Ari flinched, “Are you sure you’re okay to be here? You look like you’re dying.”

“I probably am,” she muttered back. She nearly fell out of her chair as she tried to lift her head to meet Jack’s eyes,. “I haven’t eaten a few weeks. I’ve tried blood, thinking that would appease the baby. I’ve tried everything.”

He steadied his friend, placing his hand to her forehead which was burning up, “Your beast has blood doesn’t he?”

Ari’s eyes snapped open, meeting Jack’s blue ones, “He will never let me. I tried after mom died because I wanted to see her again and he refused.”

“You weren’t this sick and pregnant before,” Jack whispered. “If that’s the only way to help you, I’m sure he’ll do it if he doesn’t want you to die.”

A knock at Bella’s office door pulled the two out of their conversation, “What are you filling her head with, Dr. Seward? She needs her rest.” Dracula smiled as he made his way over to Ari, kissing the back of her neck as she laid her head back onto her desk, “How are you feeling, love?”

She lifted her head enough to glare at him before laying it back down.

“She needs to eat something, to drink something,” Jack reiterated.

The vampire eyed the young doctor who was clinging to Bella’s shaking hand in order to steady it, snarling at the contact, “What exactly are you suggesting?”

“If she can’t keep anything down, maybe she needs to drink your blood.”

“Absolutely not,” Dracula exclaimed, pulling Jack away from Bella. “Do you know what will happen if she does? Her DNA will sync with Agatha’s, Zoe’s, and Johnathan’s, just like it did when Zoe drank my blood. Her brain will be flooded with their personalities. She’ll either go insane or she will become them and completely lose her sense of self because they will overrun her consciousness. Is that what you want?”


	34. Chapter 34

Perhaps it was the constant bickering back and forth between Jack and Dracula that had caused her to collapse onto the ground when she tried to leave the room. She couldn’t take the yelling anymore, she was too weak. More likely, she fell to the ground because her legs just couldn’t hold up her weight anymore. She hadn’t eating in almost two weeks. The only thing Arabella remembered when she woke up a few days later was the sound of her head smacking the tile in her office and Dracula instructing Jack to take you to the infirmary. She was bleeding and he couldn’t control himself.

Bella’s eyes fluttered open, cringing at the harsh overhead lighting of the infirmary at the Jonathan Harker Foundation. Of course, she couldn’t be taken to a regular hospital given her condition and the pandemic that was spreading all over the world. She gripped the hand that was resting on her stomach and turned her throbbing head to meet Dracula’s sleeping form. His head was rested on her stomach as well.

She was feeling better. She wasn’t nauseous for the first time in weeks and her head wan’t spinning, though she’d take that over the pounding smacking her head on the tile had caused. Her free hand tenderly rubbed the stitches in her forehead, noting the transfusion bag hanging next to her bed. She almost didn’t have a second thought about it until she noted a name printed onto the label: ‘Dracula’.

“Vlad,” she shook him by the hair on his head, “wake up.”

The vampire lifted his head to meet his love’s eyes, smiling as he noticed the color had returned to her face, showing that she was once again full of life, “How are you feeling?” Not a word left her mouth, but she pointed to the bag and Dracula let out a soft ‘ah’ sound, “I didn’t want to do it, but I had no other option. Let you die or give you my blood? The choice was easy.”

“You and I both know you didn’t do it of your own free will,” Bella grunted as she shuffled to sit up straight in her bed. “Can you turn off the lights?”

Dracula did as she said before returning to her side, large hand stroking the bulge in her stomach with the tenderness, “I may have let Dr. Bloxham and young Dr. Seward influence me when your heart stopped.”

“My heart stopped? Is the baby okay?” The sound of Bella’s heart pounding with worry was loud in not only her ears, but Dracula’s as well.

Dracula nodded, attempting to calm her by pulling her into his arms as he sat next to her in bed, “Everything is fine. You’ve also been tolerating regular infusions of nutrients, so you’ll probably be able to eat normal food so long as you receive regular doses of my blood.”

“So, the baby is okay? Nothing is wrong?” Ari sighed, letting herself relax as she pressed a kiss to Dracula’s cheek.

He smiled down at her, brushing dark hairr out of her face and behind her ear, “And you should be able to to go home tonight if you don’t get sick before this afternoon. However, you will be on bedrest for the rest of your pregnancy. I believe Dr. Bloxham will be hiring a temporary replacement while you are out, a former employee under your mother before you were born. I couldn’t tell you who, though. He will be stopping by the penthouse in about a week to drop off your things.”

“How are you feeling?” Bloxham asked as she stepped into the room, rubbing hand sanitizer into her hands and putting on her mask. Bella reached for her own before the doctor waved her hand, “Don’t worry about it. We tested you while you were sleeping. You’re negative.”

“I feel fine,” Ari smiled, pulling her body off of Dracula’s whose hand still clung to her waist to keep her close. “I want to go home and sleep in my own bed with my fiancé.”

The doctor checked Bella’s vitals before noting them down in the chart the was hanging on the door, “Well, it’s looking like you can. You don’t feel sick?” Bella shook her head. “Would you try to eat?” Bella nodded, “Then I’ll have Jack bring you something.”

Arabella and Dracula sat in silence for a moment, the vampire eyeing the hanging bag of his own blood flowing down through a clear tube and into his love’s arm, “So, I’m your fiancé now? When did that happen?”

“When I decided it,” she shrugged, nuzzling her face into his neck. “The offer still stands, yes?”

“It does,” Dracula grinned, reaching into his pocket to pull out the ring.

A small snort left Bella’s mouth, “You carry it with you?”

As Dracula slid the ring on her finger, he kissed her with a small nod, “I’ve told you a million times, Ms. Van Helsing, you were going to marry me wether you liked it or not.”

A giggle let her mouth as she threw her arms around his neck to kiss him hard, his hands tangled in her hair and hers pressed to his cheeks. Before she could really relax into her fiancé’s arms, a cough pulled her out of her dream land. Jack stood in the door way looking way too uncomfortable, holding a paper bag and styrofoam cup in his hand.

“I brought you McDonalds,” he sighed, handing Bella the bag and cup. “Bloxham said no soda or tea, so you got water.”

“Lovely,” she whispered sarcastically. “You could have snuck it in. I’m craving coke.”

“Bloxham said no,” Dracula insisted, this being the first time he has ever agreed with either Bloxham or Jack.

She sipped the water, “You of all people should no how horrible zero flavor is.”

Dracula pressed the straw back against Bella’s lips, “Drink your water.”

“How’s she feeling,” Jack asked Dracula as he sat in the chair at the foot of the bed after checking Bella’s vitals as well as measuring the amount of Dracula’s blood still draining into her arm. “She’s not acting different? No sign of other Van Helsing?”

“None that I’ve noticed,” the vampire grinned.


End file.
